Ben Holliday Twitter: @benholliday Website/blog: benholliday.com medium.com/@BenHolliday Emily Tulloh Twitter: @emilytulloh Blog: medium.com/@emilytulloh Emily is a senior designer at FutureGov and is leading our response to the climate and ecological emergency. Julian Thompson Twitter: @julesequity Website: rootedbydesign.co.uk Julian is a senior designer at FutureGov and is founder of Rooted By Design - a community of Black Designers & problem solvers.
A design mindset is how we respond to our immediate surroundings and work. This means asking different types of questions, and requires a different set of responses to the challenges we face.
FROM Business/technical perspective “It works like this to maintain BAU” Complexity “We’re dealing with great complexity” We can’t change that “Absolutely not…” Needing certainty “We need certainty” Fixed assumptions “How can we prove we’re right” Closed “There’s no need to share/make work visible” TO User-focussed “It could work like this for people in the future” Simplicity “Let’s go back to first principles” We can change that “Why not…” Not knowing “Ambiguity is okay, we can learn more by doing” Changing our minds “How might we be wrong about this” Open “Collaboration connects and creates new ideas”
An outcomes based approach to complexity: - Creating simple models to communicate component parts of a bigger picture/system. - Framing challenges and priorities without being drawn into detail too early or in the wrong places. - Having a clear goal (vision/proposition) to work towards that helps us stay focussed on user-based and/or policy outcomes.
Creativity should not be thought of as a specialist or localised resource, but as a competence that needs to be part of the fabric of a 21st century organisation.
First principles is about breaking something down to its most fundamental component parts, or the things that you believe are true. Then you work from there.
“…[a framework or model] is purposefully reductive. It takes things away, emphasising only a small part of a large whole, so that we can focus only on what remains. A world map is a model of earth that removes nearly everything about the planet, leaving only relative masses, names of countries and cities, and overall proximity.” Jon Kolko