How can we use design methods to create public value and improve societal outcomes? This course offers practical tools to tackle complex problems through inclusion, collaboration, and co-design across public and private sectors.
Participants will learn strategies to keep people at the centre of messy public problems and minimise the negative effects of bureaucracy, power, myopia, or bias that can weaken action to improve people’s lives.
This course will explore how the design process can be applied at local, national, and global levels through public-private cooperation, public sector leadership, and community-led change. We will provide practical tools that one can use in current work to design services, make decisions, develop programmes, or influence systems. Ultimately, the course aims to be a platform for participants to explore topics such as participation, inclusion, co-design, cross-sector collaboration, exploration, and implementation to generate public value.
Prerequisites
You don’t have to be a practising designer or work in the public sector to take this course. Designers, researchers, managers, administrators, public servants, and changemakers of all kinds will find this course valuable.
How you’ll learn
The workshop includes live instruction, individual activities and reflection, small group exercises, and case studies. Participants will also learn and practise design methods as part of a team project that gives them the opportunity to practise research, design, and testing skills first-hand.
What you’ll learn
What to bring
Chris is currently Director of User Experience and Product Inclusion at United Healthcare, where he works with multidisciplinary teams to develop new healthcare services for people covered by state and federal health insurance programmes. He has extensive cross-sector, international and domestic experience and has contributed to award-winning work in public health, education, transportation, and justice system spaces. His approach blends service design, real-world testing and change management practises to steward initiatives through implementation and refine the underlying technical or regulatory infrastructure. Chris has refined his approach to design-led systems change through his experiences consulting state and federal US Government agencies on digital modernisation efforts, building a decentralised clinical trials platform that enables better science, developing public health programmes with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, and piloting workforce development programmes across the California Bay Area.
Chris holds a Master of Science in Design Research from Arizona State University and a Bachelors of Science in Industrial Design from Ohio State University.
Gabriela is passionate about working in interdisciplinary and diverse teams to tackle wicked problems, envision alternative desirable futures, and conceive solutions to effect positive change in people’s lives. To do so, she draws on her expertise in design research, strategic design and futures studies. Throughout her career, she has reinforced her vocation as a generalist, working with various research areas —from mobility and mobile banking, to safety for women and social capital, to name a few. She is currently the Head of Exploration of the Accelerator Lab at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Mexico, where she is part of a network of practitioners that work to reimagine development and accelerate learnings to achieve more sustainable futures. Before joining UNDP, she worked at Laboratorio para la Ciudad – the experimental arm of the Mexico City government– where she supported innovation strategies, harnessing the capabilities of government, academia and civil society in order to solve public problems. Prior to her work in public sector, she worked for various strategic design and innovation consultancy firms.
Gabriela holds a M.A. in Futures Studies from Freie Universitaet Berlin and a B.A. in Industrial Design from Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México.
