Summary
In Australia, the public sector is marred by a legacy of efficiency-driven systems that put some of Australia’s most vulnerable at risk. The outcomes of recent Royal Commissions triggered by these failures suggest that the public sector is moving into a new era. Project proposals now require ethnographic research and meaningful collaboration with people who have lived experience of systems failure. We will share our trajectory as a ten-year-old design organization advocating for and driving these practices, recent project case studies about mental health reform and co-production, and a series of provocations about the path we see ahead.
Key Insights
-
•
Australia’s public sector was largely undesigned and paternalistic before 2012, treating design mainly as outsourced web development.
-
•
Studio Thick, launched by Damon Young and Adam Morris in 2012, introduced ethical design focusing on people, planet, and organizations, blending service design with product development.
-
•
Royal commissions into system failures, like family violence and mental health, exposed the inadequacies of traditional approaches and spurred design adoption in public policy.
-
•
Australia’s digital transformation efforts started around 2015 but had poor user experience and trust due to delayed integration of UX and service design.
-
•
By 2018-2019, Australian civic design practices shifted from bifurcated service/product roles to multidisciplinary, impact-focused autonomous teams.
-
•
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital service delivery and innovation, intensifying the public sector’s need for mature design capabilities.
-
•
Mental health reform in Victoria involves a Royal Commission with 65 recommendations, roughly one-third emphasizing co-design with people having lived experience.
-
•
Building organizational co-design capability requires guidelines around partnership, recruitment, safety milestones, and shifting bureaucratic power dynamics.
-
•
Blended teams combining designers and people with lived experience create challenges in mentoring, power sharing, and shifting roles beyond classic design skills.
-
•
Consultants are evolving into facilitators of systemic change, responsible for holding complex, multi-stakeholder projects together while fostering capacity building.
Notable Quotes
"Sovereignty was never ceded."
"Design for the government was something you do to outsource web development, not for serious problems."
"Studio Thick’s name refers to thick value — qualitative research with more depth than simple messages."
"The system had catastrophically failed to live up to expert expectations and was underprepared for future challenges."
"Nearly a third of the 65 mental health commission recommendations call for co-design, which is pretty exciting."
"Designers need to switch hats when working with people who aren’t trained designers — mentoring is essential."
"Power sharing requires behavior change, reflection, and descending about expertise."
"Producers create a care plan for every project — they’re far more than project managers."
"Co-planning means building trust and relationships before planning the project itself as a blended team."
"How do we become facilitators who can encourage and model true power sharing? That’s the big question."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"People who experience trauma often feel powerless; trauma-informed design should empower and give voice and choice instead."
Carol Scott Melissa EgglestonAvoid Harming Your Team and Users: Promoting Care and Brand Reputation with Trauma-Informed UX Practices
February 5, 2025
"If you press the exact same button today and tomorrow you get two different results, that’s non-deterministic UX."
Lija Hogan Milan Mijatovic Sam Proulx Louis RosenfeldThree Years Out: Perspectives on the Near-Term Future of User Research
March 15, 2024
"Mobile accessibility features are built in and ready to go without needing to install or configure anything extra."
Sam ProulxMobile Accessibility and You
June 9, 2022
"We openly talk about burnout and mental health so people feel comfortable reaching out when they need to."
Ana FerreiraDesigning Distributed: Leading Doist’s Fully Remote Design Team in Six Countries
January 8, 2024
"Search alone doesn’t cut it, particularly when people don’t know what they’re looking for or lack context."
Jorge ArangoScale Smart: AI-Powered Content Organization Strategies
September 24, 2024
"No doctor wants to use an EHR; we’re often the least bad option in a field full of poor usability."
Chris MosesStretching the Definition of DesignOps with Product Development
November 7, 2018
"It becomes the designer’s responsibility to figure out what aspects of the instructions to the LLM should be configurable and what should be fixed."
Trisha Causley[Demo] Complexity in disguise: Crafting experiences for generative AI features
June 5, 2024
"Novice users can try things out thanks to automation, but experts can focus on the challenging and creative pieces."
Clara Kliman-SilverUX Futures: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Design
June 7, 2023
"Not a single person on this relationship map reported to me. That’s how I affect design at scale at Autodesk."
Michael PolivkaScaling Design through Relationship Maps
November 7, 2017