Summary
In his opening keynote, Christian Bason, CEO, Danish Design Centre, will share insights from his nearly two decades of work with civic design as an approach to human-centred innovation and sustainable change. Based on his experience from running MindLab, the Danish government’s innovation team, as well as academic research and hands-on design projects with public organisations, Christian will assess the past and present of civic design. He will suggest that while it may seem there is a clash between the empathy, creativity and formgiving in design versus the objectivity, analytics and rationality of bureaucracy, they can be reconciled. The world needs both stability and change, and civic designers who can embrace both perspectives have the potential of transforming how we run government to the benefit of people, society and the planet. Christian will end his presentation by proposing some future directions for civic design that can unleash its full potential in the years to come.
Key Insights
-
•
Civic design is not about managing change but discovering what change is needed through empathy and human-centered research.
-
•
Embedding design studios within government ministries enables strategic partnership and long-term innovation beyond isolated projects.
-
•
Despite bureaucracy’s persistence, empathy and design-driven approaches can and must coexist within public institutions.
-
•
Civic design successfully applies across diverse sectors including health, social services, digital government, justice, immigration, and economic development.
-
•
Prototyping and iterative testing enable rapid learning and reduce risks in public sector innovation despite complex stakeholder environments.
-
•
Sustained use of civic design by public managers over 10 years proves its value and lasting impact on policy and service outcomes.
-
•
A key challenge is scaling human-centered culture across entire organizations rather than confining design to specialized teams or labs.
-
•
Future civic design must focus on systemic, mission-oriented challenges addressing cross-sector and multi-level problems.
-
•
Ethics, inclusion, and digital responsibility (for example using a digital ethics compass) are critical in shaping trustworthy technology in public services.
-
•
Next-generation civic organizations should move beyond hierarchy to self-management, trust, and role-based task definitions to fully unleash human creativity.
Notable Quotes
"Civic design is challenging because it’s about discovering what kind of changes are needed, not just managing change."
"It’s a fake contradiction to say empathy and bureaucracy cannot coexist; we need bureaucracy to have empathy."
"Design makes the abstract tangible by transforming concepts into something with form, shape, and expression."
"Embedding creativity, innovation, and design methodologies in the heart of government is a compelling journey many governments are on."
"We must not build procedures and policies before we really need them, and define tasks not by hierarchy but by roles."
"After 10 years, managers who first encountered civic design still believe it’s the right approach and continue to use it."
"Civic design lets us nuance the full range of citizens’ behavior, which often isn’t purely rational."
"We can prototype policies by imagining a citizen’s daily life if a policy is realized, despite political and time constraints."
"The future of civic design is systemic, mission-driven, ethical, inclusive, and regenerative, considering all living things."
"We have to create human-centered organizations where people thrive by trust and recognition, grow with influence, and want to make a difference."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Screen readers let us jump from one heading to another, replicating the experience of skimming a page visually."
Sam ProulxSUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
December 9, 2021
"Most of our designers are contractors; they have limited voice because they’re bound by contracts."
Michael LandEstablishing Design Operations in Government
February 18, 2021
"Our one metric that mattered was maximizing the number of VOС-tagged tickets solved – showing customer feedback made it to the roadmap."
Shipra KayanHow we Built a VoC (Voice of the Customer) Practice at Upwork from the Ground Up
September 30, 2021
"Leadership doesn’t only mean managing; it can be mentoring, product leadership, or technical influence."
Ian SwinsonDesigning and Driving UX Careers
June 8, 2016
"The chief of staff serves as a bridge between the design program managers, executive assistants, and other ux and product chiefs of staff."
Isaac HeyveldExpand DesignOps Leadership as a Chief of Staff
September 8, 2022
"Self-service was a model with the most unknowns but possibly the biggest rewards."
Amy EvansHow to Create Change
September 25, 2024
"Super strength is the resilience and endurance to partner and drive strategic impact backed by customer obsession."
Kate Koch Prateek KalliFlex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
September 30, 2021
"If you do anything with other people, you’re creating culture."
Dave GrayLiminal Thinking: Sense-making for systems in large organizations
May 14, 2015
"We wanted a living network of knowledge so yesterday’s insight connects to today’s evidence and tomorrow’s learning."
Matt DuignanAtomizing Research: Trend or Trap
March 30, 2020
