New Policy Design Category Announced
- Published on: 1 March 2024
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Through the Australian Good Design Awards, Good Design Australia aims to recognise and showcase the powerful ways in which design helps to shape better outcomes for people and our planet. To further this vision, the 2024 Australian Good Design Awards is proud to introduce a new stand-alone Design Discipline for Policy Design.
The main objective of the Policy Design Discipline is to uplift the role of design in the policy-making sphere and support the required changes to culture, mindsets, skills, tools and processes that support the development of well-designed policy.
The Discipline includes the design of policy for three main areas. These include policy from large-scale, cross-cutting efforts to smaller localised implementations:
- Public Policy / Government
- Not-for-Profit / Non-Government / For-Purpose Organisations
- Private / Commercial Sector
Jane MacMaster, aerospace, mechanical and systems design engineer, Good Design Ambassador and figurehead in the development of the Australian Government’s strategic policy methodology, worked closely with the Good Design Australia team to outline the transformational criteria for the new Discipline.
We sat down with Jane to get her take on why this new Discipline is so important, and why now is the time for all policymakers to implement good design principles for the betterment of the people and our planet. Jane’s unique background and experience, perfectly positions her to provide a clear value proposition when it comes to the impact of good design in policy.
“One of the reasons I’m so passionate about the acknowledgement and promotion of good design in policy is because it combines two career chapters in my life – 15 years working in the defence industry working on pretty sophisticated design systems, and another chapter working in the policy world, in the department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet,” says Jane.
“There is no better place than the Australian Good Design Awards to recognise how important good design is to good policy, because policymakers are often grappling with the most complex challenges of our time.”
The Jury, which Jane will Chair, will be looking for projects where a holistic design approach has been carefully considered and can demonstrate either existing or high confidence in potential impact. The focus is on outcomes that will improve the quality of life for people and contribute to better economic, social and environmental realities.
Jane notes that some key aspects of good policy design include framing problems well, understanding root causes, engaging stakeholders, recognising complexity through iteration, and considering human factors.
As with all good design processes and particularly when trying to solve big, complex challenges that often straddle a multitude of stakeholders, departments and implementation areas, creativity and innovative thinking also play a big part in articulating the right problems and designing the best solutions.
“Being really creative and innovative in policy ideation ensures that there’s space for divergent and convergent thinking to roll out. It not only rules out the options that won’t work, but keeps us striving for the ideas that will work within the constraints that we’re working in.
“I also think the best designed policies have to be grounded in a really sound and deep understanding of why the problem is happening in the first place”, continues Jane. “That is, understanding the causal relationships – the cause and effect – that’s bringing the problematic situation about in the first place, because that gives us the insight about where to act, and what to build and design into the policy so that it will be effective”.
The Design Policy Discipline comes hot on the heels of the wide success of the Australian Good Design Awards’ Design Strategy Discipline. Jane says the distinction between these categories lies in commerciality.
Design Strategy looks primarily at the design and impact of a strategy implemented by or within a business to help drive conscious commercial success. Whereas the Policy Design Discipline evaluates the policy itself, how well it has articulated a problem, the professionality of the design process in action, and what positive impact or potential for positive impact it has.
The Policy Design Discipline focuses on broader societal issues and celebrates projects that expand upon impactful statements of government or organisational intent.
A Policy Design project (either in theory or in implementation or both) is defined as a combination of:
- A statement of intent that has the potential to make positive impact on people’s lives at a systems level and drive a desired outcome
- Objectives which have been identified that need to be achieved to bring about the desired outcomes
- Coordinated actions which have been identified that need to be done to achieve the objectives
- Resources including funding, people, legislation/rules/governance and others which have been identified as being needed to ‘do’ or implement the actions
“Good Design Australia is very proud to launch this new Design Discipline. It has enormous potential to create large-scale impact, for a wide-range of people. By showcasing examples of well-designed policy and how to achieve it, we aim to raise the awareness of the importance of good design in effective policy.
“Better designed policies will facilitate more opportunities for meaningful change at-scale, and provide better frameworks and goals to unify our efforts around”, said Rachel Wye, Good Design Australia’s Director.
“We are hugely grateful for the time and effort that our advisory group invested in helping us co-design the criteria for this category and particularly grateful to Jane for her passion and energy, to help get this important area of design recognised and celebrated at the highest levels possible,” said Rachel.
Jane shares her aspirations for the new Design Discipline, “I’d love for this new Discipline to contribute to raising the profile and awareness that design plays a really important role in policy, and that good policy is well-designed policy.
“I hope that more people explore what well-designed policy means and build it into their everyday work, because I think the more that happens, the more successful they’ll be.
“We’re here to achieve change. Recognising that good design is an essential part of the process in achieving effective and positive change will help us all get there faster and encourage lasting and meaningful impact for a broader range of people.”
ENTER THE 2024 AUSTRALIAN GOOD DESIGN AWARDS
Entries to the 2024 Australian Good Design Awards are open now and are accepting entries across 12 main Design Disciplines, including Policy Design. If you know of any Policy Design projects worthy of recognition, we encourage them to submit into this year’s Awards.
Early Bird Entries are open now and close at midnight 15 March 2024.
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