As part of our learning series leading up to the Next Generation of Government Summit, we spent an evening with Joshua Marcuse, Senior Advisor for Policy Innovation at the Department of Defense, and Beth Flores, a former DoD employee who now runs Impact Hub D.C. We only had an hour but it was enough time for them… Read more »
Design thinking is shaking up how top innovators do business. But it is not a new flavor of the month — it has been practiced for decades. You can benefit from design thinking no matter what your background or field.
Design thinking is so much more than a physical product. It is a way of thinking. For example, if you were asked to design a new vase, you might come up with myriad product designs. But if instead you were asked to design a new way to display flowers in your home, you would likely… Read more »
Herbert Simon once said “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Before hearing that statement, I had a very narrow view of design. I thought design was for creative types or artists who made shoes, furniture or cool new technology products. I didn’t realize that design encompasses… Read more »
Too many times have I seen decisions made in the ivory tower of local government fall flat in their operational implementation due to lack of input into the design from all the customers. The old way of thinking and functioning as government trumps a progressive and modern approach to creating an amazing and impactful program…. Read more »
Before beginning my detail here at the beginning of July, I had visions of what it would be like working at the Innovation Lab at the Office of Personnel Management (also known as the Lab at OPM). I had been to its ‘Introduction to Human-Centered Design’ training, and I had reveled in the couches, white… Read more »
This week marks my fourth week on detail to the Office of Personnel Management’s Innovation Lab, commonly known as The Lab at OPM. If you’re not familiar with the Lab, it was created as a space to encourage creative problem solving within the government. Modeled after visits to companies known for creativity and innovation in… Read more »
“The desire to bring new ways of thinking into government is like an insurgency,” said Joshua Marcuse, Senior Advisory for Policy Innovation at DoD. One of those ways of thinking is design thinking, also called human-centered design (HCD). To learn more about design thinking, we spoke with Zvika Krieger, Director of the Strategy Lab at… Read more »
“We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye…The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.” (Bronowski, 1973) Designing government Like most governments right now, we’re very excited about the potential of design to transform service delivery and policy… Read more »