Making Sense of Prototyping for Policy

Notes and thoughts on the Law + Design Summit 2018 at Stanford’s d.school (Nov 8–10, 2018)

The provocation on the cover of the 2-day experimental conference asked “How can we use participatory, creative design methods in public institutions to serve people better?”

The Legal Design Lab sits at the intersection of the Stanford Law School and the Stanford d.school and what better place to host a wide ranging set of presentations and discussions on the topic of public policy and the role of design. I felt particularly at home amongst an eclectic mix of global academics, civil servants, lawyers, technologists, social innovators, design professionals, and associated brokers of uncertainty...

Reflecting on the many discussions that took place over two days, both formally convened in a workshop and informally held over coffee breaks or a stroll through Stanford’s expansive campus, I was reminded of how much questions matter in the framing of the work to be done.

Our first morning small-group breakout session was a wide-ranging discussion on New Policy-Making Cycles. The prompting question that brought the group together was:

Our reflections on this question and whiteboard capturing the discussion (see below) were sprawling, covering topics of experimentation, impact, measures and evaluation, practice, politics and power, inclusion, legitimacy, legislative theatre, politics of policy making, and expertise and knowledge.

Our small group attempted to draw these threads together to a degree, but I wondered if we struggled with a question in which the answer was presupposed. Prototyping for policy is the solution, but what’s the problem? And so our first response was to name and list all of the thorny issues of these new hybrid dynamics surrounding modern governance, politics, policy, and the creation and inclusion of publics through these acts using design methods.

By the time it got to me for my reflections, I had been stewing on my own questions rather than answers: “Is the ‘cycle’ really the right metaphor?” and if not, “How do we use new temporal metaphors to break our traditional pattern entrainment?” and “Is/was Lasswell’s model cycle really how policy happens? Has anyone ever experienced a waterfall policy lifecycle as described?”

The group discussion turned and we looked towards different metaphors to describe the dynamics of how policy comes to be in the world and have an impact. Theatrical metaphors emerged quickly from the group, possibly due to service designers being part of the conversation and their tendency towards thinking in dramaturgical terms in their work (front stage, back stage, etc.). And a new question emerged: “What if (or when if?), the policy making cycle looked like…?”

I’m sure if we’d kept our session going, we could have explored other metaphorical territories (see above) and with them, associated ways of rethinking the problems and solutions of design for policy. My lingering question, one which I think still needs serious contemplation:

The first session evoked not just the “what” and “how” of design and policy making but also the “when” of policy (if cycles are really all about time and temporal metaphors shape our design activities). We would often circle back to the issue of timing and when to prototype during policy movements across the two days, across the seven-minute lightning talks, breakouts, and workshops.

I have a slide in one of my design for policy decks that I use with our clients that states:

So in reflecting on questions like “When is it appropriate to prototype in the policy lifecycle?” or “When is it most effective to prototype in policy making?” feels to me to be a question of asking ourselves “When is it most appropriate to learn during the policy cycle?”

Because we would advocate to always keep learning and never willingly forgo the opportunity, it may be a silly question to ask in that way. But a better way of asking might be “What is it we’re trying to learn?” and “Is prototyping the best way to learn that at this particular moment in time?”

Can you have a prototype without policy intent? Can you state policy intent without the “solution” prescribed or implied in the statement?

If there’s an area that I am desperate to see expand in this current body of study around policy and design, it’s a literacy around the interplay of power and knowledge. If we believe that the reason for prototyping is to learn, to generate evidence, and to create new ways of knowing about the impact of a particular policy long before the policy becomes material in the world around us, then we are making a claim about a particular form of rationality inherent in prototyping and experimentation.

Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg took on the project of advocating for a social science that doesn’t model itself on the natural sciences. His approach, the phronetic social science movement takes a value-rational approach to research and making recommendations. And given policy is about intent, normative statements (recommendations) on how the world should be and design is broadly engaged in rendering that intent visible and enabling the desired outcomes, it feels like a great philosophical starting point for our emerging design genre to investigate further.

Designers tend to be very good at understanding desirability (via design research, etc.) but where is the political dimension of asking who gains and loses and by which mechanisms of power? That, at least in my work, is often not easily found within the brief. What tools do designers have at hand to understand how power flows across a system, through a network of actors?

And finally, speaking of reading lists…

Given the breadth and depth of a topic like design and policy, the interdisciplinary nature of the attendees, and our individual histories working across and through public service, law, technology, and design, it was at times a bit exhausting to negotiate a shared point of reference in conversations. The words “strategy” and “design” and “policy” and “complexity” and “systems” are expansive and have much thought and history and writing behind them.

In summary, so very thankful that Margaret and the team convened the Law + Design Summit 2018 and that I was able to participate. Many thanks to all of the lovely, passionate, and intelligent people working in this field that took the time to talk, listen, and reflect with me. Looking forward to the next event and watching this emerging field continue to mature.

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