FWD50 Extras: Practical applications of speculative design in service delivery

Public sector innovation has fundamentally different goals than private sector innovation, so it needs a different set of tools. The UX design practice of identifying and alleviating user pain points is now common in many service-oriented organizations, including government. But pulling away from pain, while useful in the short-term, is reactive. While public institutions need to react to the problems of the day, they also need to be visionaries, shaping a better society for the people they serve.

Enter speculative design! This emerging design discipline has helped us move away from reactive thinking and towards a values-based approach to service design. At the Digital Foundations and Futures Accelerator, they’ve been imagining what a “better future” might look like in the year 2071, and what our services could be in such a world. They then “steal” those ideas from the future, create prototypes and test with members of the public.

Who should come:

If your team…

• Is embarking on a new project, or wants to take a fresh look at an existing programme
• Would benefit from less reactive, more reflective problem solving approaches
• Is interested in moving from a big idea to a user-tested prototype in the course of two weeks

… this workshop is for you!

FWD50 Extras is a year-round series of events. These events include workshops, meetups, debates, and more, and are a chance to dive deeper into vital public sector topics with world-renowned experts on policy and technology.