Four years into Policy Lab: the power of emergence and being open to opportunity

If you had told me four years ago, when I joined the Cabinet Office, that by 2018 we would have worked across 15 major government departments
Policy Lab mission is to radically improve policy making through design, innovation and people-centred approaches.
If you had told me four years ago, when I joined the Cabinet Office, that by 2018 we would have worked across 15 major government departments
By Jasmine Robinson: It’s a big question for a short blog post, but over the course of my three month placement with Policy Lab, it is one that has been constantly on my mind. The Lab is a mix of experienced …
We have recently been supporting the Housing Minister, Alok Sharma, and the Department for Communities and Local Government as they travel around the country to listen to the experiences, concerns and ideas of social housing residents - all to inform …
It’s important to pack light when testing prototypes across the country. As well as being practical, you have to leave weighty assumptions on the platform at, in our case, Euston or Kings Cross. Over the last few months Policy …
I am often asked by designers for specific examples where design approaches have been used in the creation of policy. From a design perspective, the ‘concreteness’ of physical artefacts is much easier to describe, whereas both service design and policy …
You might remember when ‘selfie’ was declared the word of the year by the Oxford dictionaries. Shortly after, the term ‘shelfie’ (a photo of your bookshelf)
A welcome is in order this week... You might have seen our advertisement for a new Policy Designer earlier in the year. We had an amazing response and were privileged to meet many talented and interesting people. Today, we’re delighted …
A few weeks ago we spent a productive day co-designing possible interventions which might help improve experiences of the private rented sector (PRS). With an incredibly energetic group of people representing tenants and landlords, we shared insights from ethnographically-inspired research …
How new technologies are improving our tools for analysis and impact...
Prototyping might be worth a try. Just putting it out there…