RISD, State Dept. collaborate to bring design thinking to policy

THE RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN and the U.S. State Department are putting on a week-long program that will highlight ways in which human-centered design can be incorporated into public policy decisions.
THE RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN and the U.S. State Department are putting on a week-long program that will highlight ways in which human-centered design can be incorporated into public policy decisions.

PROVIDENCE – The first-ever Institute for Design and Public Policy at the Rhode Island School of Design brings together 24 leaders and strategists from Aug. 2-8 to focus on how to use human-centered design to address complex public policy issues.

The program developed by RISD and the U.S. Department of State is the first partnership of its kind in the country, RISD announced in a media advisory and a release on its website.

“This program plays to RISD’s strengths,” said Greg Victory, executive director of Continuing Education at RISD. “In partnering with the State Department for an immersive and collaborative experience, we aim to empower policy makers and strategists to be change agents who focus on the human aspects of every decision they make.”

The idea was conceived last summer during a conversation with Amy Storrow and Paul Kruchoski at the State Department’s Collaboratory in Washington, D.C., said Victory. The Collaboratory designs, pilots, and furthers educational and cultural diplomacy in new ways. Storrow is a senior adviser for innovation and director at the Collaboratory; Kruchoski is the agency’s policy adviser and deputy director.

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The week-long learning experience will be co-taught by State Department Senior Strategy Advisor Zvika Krieger and RISD faculty members Justin W. Cook and Enrique Martinez.

Martinez, a senior critic in architecture, says policy-making organizations “are still not inviting designers to the table where big decisions are made. Now is the time to explore how key strategists in these organizations can use design tools to their advantage in the work they do.”

Some of the selected participants include members of: the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., R.I. Department of Administration, the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute, ?Toilet Hackers, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Yale School of Management.

During the program at RISD, participants will work with tools that help move collaborative innovation from an abstract idea into a replicable process. After an introduction to the design process, participants will grapple with a case study based on the decentralized models of electrical power supply challenging traditional electricity production globally. Work sessions will be based on site visits Tuesday to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center of Boston, Greentown Labs of Somerville, Mass.; XL Hybrids of Brighton, Mass., and Ft. Devens Base Camp in Fort Devens, Mass.

Participant collaboration in groups is intended to yield possible solutions that will ultimately be presented to a panel of guest critics.

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