What do they really mean by “design”? A textual analysis of the reports from design-led labs that strive for better service provision and policymaking

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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Location:
Date
2016
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Creative Sustainability
Language
en
Pages
106
Series
Abstract
This master’s thesis investigates the notion of design depicted by the design-led labs (DLLs) in the emergent field of design for public sector through the viewpoints of two eminent design scholars, namely Bryan Lawson and Nigel Cross. The DLLs in this thesis refer to various agencies with design as their core competence that are involved in the attempts to improve public service provision and policymaking in collabo-ration with their respective governments. These DLLs have largely owed their origins to the governments’ demands for creating better services and policies with decreased financial re-sources. As a result of budgetary constraints and a variety of complex societal problems, the public sectors has been obligated to seek ways to innovate their solutions. In the effort to miti-gate the difficulties, design seems to have arisen as one of the alternative approaches to ad-dress these challenges on account of its prevalent emergence and achievements around the world. However, the usage of the term “design”, constantly mentioned by the DLLs appears confusing and remains undefined. Due to this lack of clarity with the most essential concept, this thesis attempts to disclose the actual meaning of “design” as seen by the DLLs. This thesis analyses the notion of design adopted by DLLs and explicated in their reports. The notion of design is operationalised on the basis of four landmark design research publications. These serve as investigate lenses in examining the reports from DLLs in four different coun-tries, namely the Design Council (UK), Public Policy Lab (US), Strategic Design Unit at SITRA (Finland), also known as Helsinki Design Lab, and MindLab (Denmark), in order to identify the various notions of design. Through the analysis of the four books, the notions of design are identified and categorised under three themes: design tendencies; design capabilities; design skills. The analysis based on the aforementioned themes shows that the notions of design expressed in the DLL’s reports extend or contradict those established by Lawson and Cross. As a conclusion, this study presents the four extended design capability and design skills, as well as a new set of design capabilities that may contribute to the process of expanding the notions of design adapted for the public sector in order to improve service provision and poli-cymaking. Additionally, the thesis summarises the arguments presented by the DLLs in sup-port of fostering design as a viable tool for the public sector and governments to achieve more effective service provision and policymaking.
Description
Supervisor
Jalas, Mikko
Thesis advisor
Lee, Seungho
Keywords
design study, notions of design, design for public sector, design for government, definitions of design
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