Top Tips: Putting design into practice
1. We can all be designers
Everybody has the capacity to
design, and by developing
or adapting new services or
policies you’re already
doing so. Adopting more formal
design methods tools and
approaches in your role will
help you to do this more
effectively.
2. Focus on the mind-set more than the methods
Design thinking is not just a set
of tools or methods,
but is also a mindset and
approach. Although toolkits
are helpful, it’s an
experimental mindset where
creativity, the ability to learn
from failure and
unexpected outcomes, and to
prototype, iterate and
reflect are key. Don’t be
overawed by or overly
dependent on ‘design tools’:
remember they are just
concepts that you can play with
and practice, rather
than a recipe you must follow.
3. Expect the unexpected (and be open to it), staying flexible and willing to change
It’s fine to be uncertain – in fact, it’s very desirable at times in the design process, which challenges the idea that you can know all the answers yourself. Cultivate empathy and a user focus, staying flexible and open to the possibility of the challenge itself changing as you start to approach the problem from the ground up rather than the top down.
It is worth investing time focusing on how to translate the excitement from design workshops involving user insights, problem definition, idea generation and prototype testing into real world implementation. Sometimes projects can lose momentum after the ideas generation stage, before they reach prototyping and implementation.
4. Choosing the right project is important; try starting small
Start small, and try it out step
by step. You can’t
change everything overnight, but
you can take a small
project and use it to show
others what’s possible and
what design-led thinking can do.
And once you’ve done it
and succeeded, you can go
further and taker on bigger
challenges with greater
confidence. Find out how
to choose the right project
to start with, and
what the key qualities are that
make one project a more
attractive opportunity than
others.
5. Keep the momentum going, and move towards implementation
The idea generation phase can be full of excitement and potential. Yet it is at this stage that many projects in the public sector fall by the wayside, failing to get buy-in or resources to move ahead. From the outset, spend time thinking about the stages that the project will need to pass through in order to successfully move ahead to implementation. If funding will need to be allocated or plans approved, what evidence do you need gather to build a compelling story? Can you break the project into phases and identify success factors at each stage that would allow the project to move ahead? Both patience and determination are important qualities in seeing a project through to implementation.