Design Research
Strategy
Civic Imagining
Futures, Policy
Civic Imagining is a design research project conducted to understand the opportunities of participatory speculative design in the context of policy and civic service.
Year: 2024 (Aug - Dec)
Purpose: Capstone Design Research
Role: Designer, Researcher
Research Challenge: Designing civic services within fixed policy and government structures face different hurdles when it comes to social innovation and adapting to external factors. How can we prepare for policy changes, create long term civic services and policies, and prepare designers in civic service and social innovation to be adaptive and future-forward?
Impact: Pinpointed main issues regarding design practice in policy and government, defined how futuring and foresight is being practiced in policy, suggested intervention points in design process-- from pre-project to post-project interventions to implement new methods in the system.
Futuring as a way for long-term service impact.
What opportunities are out there for civic service, from a critical viewpoint looking at participatory and speculative design methods?
This research project explores the opportunities, limits, methods, and areas of impact of how participatory speculative design can flourish in a space such as civic service. It looks at three spaces-- futures and foresight, design innovation, and public services-- through three research methods.
Often, civic services are limited to existing policies, resources, and political timelines. This study explores how new methods can create public services that can have a lasting, beneficial effect towards its communities, with consideration towards existing resources.
Civic Imagining invites designers, policymakers, and community members to future together, if not, imagine preferable pathways towards better civic services.
Research Methods
The exploratory research seeks to understand the extent of how participatory speculative design is also practiced in the civic service space, and understanding going beyond discourse.
Image adapted from Mitrović and Šuran (2016).
Quantitative research was conducted through a case study review. By looking through existing case studies, there is a clearer grasp of participatory speculative design (PSD) as an approach in the field.
Interviews and discussions were conducted in three spaces: Public Service, Social Innovation, and Futures Studies. Synthesis was also done through transcripts and Miro.
A Three Horizons Workshop was also conducted to understand the civic service design landscape.
The end result was a visual report, giving designers and non-designers an open invitation to explore futuring together in order to improve public services. It focuses on potential opportunity spaces in capacity building, inter-agency collaboration, or shifting the project mindset, as spaces for intervention. These are a few sample pages of the four-month design research project.
Processes of system mapping, interviews, organizing data through Miro.
Civic Imagining is a design research project conducted to understand the opportunities of participatory speculative design in the context of policy and civic service.
Year: 2024 (Aug - Dec)
Purpose: Capstone Design Research
Role: Designer, Researcher
Strategy, Design Research, Policy, Civic Service, Speculative Design, Participatory Design