Civic Lab

About

A new national centre for applied design research in public sector transformation. Our work explores how we can use design processes to (re)build trust in our public services, so that citizens and communities feel motivated and supported to participate in collective decision-making spaces.

Why design and civic

We are living in an era that demands intersectional understanding and deep synthesis. Design skills and capabilities are needed across society, and across the diverse scope of job duties and responsibilities in the public sector, to help us collectively rethink policy, service delivery and practice to meet people’s current needs and anticipate the needs of the future.

Who we work with

This innovative collaboration with DPER’s Central Design Team within the Transformation Division, will bring together citizens and communities, experts in design, and decision makers, to develop new design initiatives that will help communities, government and public services solve real-world problems more effectively.

How we work

‘NCAD DesignLab: Civic’ forms a creative meeting point between design education and public service. Our approach to designing better services is based on evidence in response to real user needs ensuring that citizens are central to planning, designing, prototyping and evaluating the services that affect them. We aim to utilise shared research and educational opportunities to make public services more efficient, innovative, and responsive to people’s everyday lives.

Partners

DesignLab: Civic is being launched in association with the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation (DPER). This innovative academia-public sector partnership will support the advancement of the roadmap for embedding design in the public service, exploring educational opportunities and shared research programmes that nurture and expand service design capability in the public sector.

Projects

Our projects span a wide range of public-sector challenges. These include designing and improving services and systems around key citizen life events, as well as creating physical and digital experiences that support seamless experiences for the public, and more effective workflows for public-sector staff. We also develop new approaches, frameworks, and methodologies to advance service design practice across government.