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Communities of Practice for Civic Design
Summary
At the April Civic Design Community call, hear from new community curator Kara Kane. She shares her experience scaling and leading the UK government’s user-centered design (UCD) communities and International Design in Government community while working at the Government Digital Service. Kara talks about how communities of practice are central to the transformation of public services. The communities she developed built design capability, aimed to create a culture of equity and inclusion and were core to developing and delivering standards and guidance for government.
Key Insights
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Communities of practice require active leadership and cannot be self-sustaining or entirely self-organized.
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The UK Government Digital Service’s user-centered design community included around 3,500 to 4,000 practitioners across multiple government departments and public sector bodies.
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Community gatherings with structured agendas but ample breaks foster both knowledge sharing and informal connections necessary in government work.
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Scaling training is achieved by building a network of facilitators from within the community rather than relying solely on a central team.
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Visual tools like posters, stickers, and physical artifacts help embed design principles and culture, though replicating these in remote work is challenging.
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The UK Government Design System is community-driven, with contributions reviewed by a working group and the community manager facilitating co-design workshops.
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Clear, consolidated communication like monthly newsletters is essential to help large, distributed communities stay informed without overload.
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Inclusive practices, including recruitment events for underrepresented groups and tailored courses, improve diversity and accessibility within the community.
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The International Design and Government Community connects over 2,500 public sector designers across 70+ countries, fostering shared learning internationally.
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Despite strong community impact, lack of internal advocacy and competing priorities (e.g., COVID, Brexit) can lead to funding loss, highlighting the need for ongoing senior stakeholder engagement.
Notable Quotes
"There is no such thing as a self-organized community; they just don’t work and fall apart without leadership."
"Communities are the glue that bring together work across silos, people, and practice."
"We ran community gatherings with themes, presentations, and breaks, because people needed space to just chat and connect."
"Scaling training happened by finding people in the community who could run sessions independently."
"The government UK Design System only works if the community contributes to it."
"Having a monthly newsletter gave people one place to go instead of having to check Slack or emails all the time."
"We created recruitment events for underrepresented groups because it was harder for them to get permission and sign up in time otherwise."
"The international design government community started by reaching out individually via Twitter to people in governments around the world."
"The team was defunded partly because we didn’t engage enough internally to make the case for our work."
"We thought a maturity model for user-centered design would have shown senior stakeholders the impact we were having, but we never had time to build it."
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