Public Services by Design | by the Design Council UK

The UK Design Council's Chairman, Sir Michael Bichard, is championing a new program called Public Services by Design. He believes there are three key ways in which design can make public services better.

1. It can redesign the way we deliver our services allowing us to “build or reshape our services around citizens, around clients, around customers.”
2. It can help the development of better policy “ensuring that ideas are tested before having scarce resources invested in them on a national basis.”
3. “Design can help us in the public services to be more innovative. We need to be conscious that today’s problems are just not going to be addressed by yesterday’s ideas and yesterday’s solutions...we need a whole new approach to policy over the 10 years.”

thinkpublic

What's not going right in London nowadays in design. Here's another example at thinkpublic of great work being done in the public sector.

Delicious Information is up and running

I left my position as a Human Factors Specialist in IDEO's Boston office last week. The economy is weak with everyone scrambling for work; it's the middle of winter; and I don't know if my skills and talent add up to more than two nickels. But as a friend of mine told me last year when he decided to pursue a career in print design after finding a sweet niche in the digital world, "I guess I'm looking for a reverse commute."

Regardless of everything IDEO had to offer from its staggering brain power to the breadth of projects, I never quite got into the groove of the private sector. It made the continuously long hours of discussing brand strategy and ROI hard to feel passionate about. With a heavy heart we all took the plunge and decided to break-up. When friends ask me how I feel, I say, "I feel everything." I feel sad and disappointed that I don't get more time learning from the best. I feel relieved and liberated from the stress of needing to give myself over to products and strategies I couldn't fully commit to. I feel hopeful that I will return to my path in the public sector designing products, services and environments that enable people to connect to the worlds around them. I feel like myself again.

With that, Delicious Information has been resurrected. It will be my own little private/public Think Tank. Going into the mix–any and all ideas that I'm stewing about that relate to me re-claiming my sanity or losing it; to creativity at large; to smart, critical design; to improving the health of our urban environments; to paving the way for shared services; to remembering it's relationships that matter above all else; to my quest for crazy delightful imaginative "what I wouldn't do to be in a space like that" places; to continuing the conversation on what makes a place a place; to disruptive behavior that doesn't shy aware from conflict; to examples of quiet thoughtful resolution. In other words, I'm looking for some inspiration to keep me from slipping so quickly down that black hole I seem to be so fond of. Ideas welcome.