Hi Mauricio,
There is growing interest and impact of design thinking and human-centred design in government, although to my knowledge there are only a few instances of design research that theorises the activity of politicians (members of the legislature, parliament, assembly etc) as design activity. There was a paper presented in the track on design in public sector that I co-chaired at the DRS conference in Brighton last year that drew on the Schön/Dorst reframing theory to analyze parliamentary debates in the UK Parliament.
Umney, D., Earl, C. & Lloyd, P. (2016). Design as analysis: examining the use of precedents in parliamentary debate. Proceedings of DRS 2016, Design Research Society 50th Anniversary Conference. Brighton, UK, 27–30 June 2016. URL https://drs2016.squarespace.com/378
My summary of the paper from the proceedings:
-snip-
Umney, Earl and Lloyd make a new link between design and government by positioning parliamentary debate as the design of society. Umney et al.’s view is situated within Kees Dorst’s frame creation theory that holds the view that designers’ progress their projects by creating shifts in perspective or ‘frame’. According to this approach, one way that these shifts in perspective are revealed is through the use of precedent examples in the design process. Through their analysis of a parliamentary debate concerning the development of a controversial high-speed railway line in the UK, Umney et al. show that the interlocutors sometimes use the same precedent to support different claims: for example as a reframing device to generate shifts in perspective, or to evoke aesthetic qualities, or to consolidate identity, or as common ground from which to overcome conflicting positions. Umney et al.’s study generalises design theory to the new domain of parliamentary debate and shows that the status of a particular precedent example as evidence is connected to the particular argumentative situation within which it is employed.
-end snip-
The MA program in Creative Sustainability here at Aalto offers a course on design for government lead by Prof. Ramia Mazé
http://dfg-course.aalto.fi/
Also of interest perhaps is that the City of Helsinki recently appointed a Chief Design Officer
http://www.hel.fi/www/uutiset/en/kaupunginkanslia/helsinkis-chief+-design-officer-is-starting-in-september
Regards
Luke
Luke Feast, PhD | Postdoctoral Researcher in Design | Department of Design | School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Aalto University | Finland
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