Discovering Policy Lab: Design in policy making

Dr Lucy Kimbell, University of the Arts London

In this talk Lucy will share insights from her AHRC-funded research fellowship in Policy Lab in the Cabinet Office. Policy Lab was set up in April 2014 as part of the Open Policy Making agenda to support civil servants to try out new tools and techniques in policy making including "design thinking". This development is part of a wider move engaging designers and design approaches in realms such as social innovation and public sector design over the past decade. Drawing on literatures in design research and organisation studies, Lucy will reflect on what design approaches bring to policy making. 

Biography

Lucy Kimbell is director of the innovation insights hub, University of the Arts London. In 2014-15 she was AHRC design research fellow in the Cabinet Office and principal research fellow at University of Brighton. Previously Lucy was Clark fellow in design leadership at Said Business School, University of Oxford where she remains an associate fellow. Her publications are around design thinking and service design, combining literatures in design studies and aspects of science and technology studies and organisation studies to explore new developments in design practice as it moves from products and technology to societal issues and policy. She has jointly led projects for the AHRC to explore the emergence of "social" design and experiment in new ways to do cross-discplinary design-oriented research. Lucy initiated and co-convenes a new group bringing arts and humanities research into policy contexts.