Article by Joshua Hart, Design Intern at PDR
As a 'young design talent', I was successful in an application to present Design4Innovation at EU Design Days and to facilitate a workshop on design methods, particularly speculative design to civil servants from across Europe.
The EU Design Days is an annual event organised by the European Regions Research and Innovation Network with the focus of increasing the use of design thinking for tackling complex political and cultural problems ultimately become a tool for change.
PDR is at the forefront of design policy and how design thinking is applied. As the lead partner of Design4Innovation, an EU funding project aimed to share our knowledge of design and its application in targeted regions, I shared some of our experiences and knowledge during the event.
Using methods drafted from our speculative design workshop which I condensed into the short one hour workshop. Participants were able to imagine new ways for how health care could look like in the future and more importantly the path to get to there. These ideas were divergently created using our speculative thinking tool which was then selected using the 'detail and scope' tool.
Overall I felt the workshop was a great success with many participants walking away with new methods of thinking, opening new possibilities. It was clear from the event that we are heading into a new era of policymaking, where policies are not just reactive to change but is creating it, integrating our values and morals in policies that shape our world.
