How can design bridge the gap between citizens and policy-making?

Design for Government

Even in a functioning democracy such as Finland, there is often a wide gap between policy-making and citizen’s experience of policies. In response, various initiatives in ministries and the Finnish government have been attempting to develop more responsive, experimental and human-centred policy-making.

As one such response, in an educational context, Design for Government (DfG) has brought multiple disciplines into policy-making. DfG is a 12-week project course at Aalto University that collaborates with ministries each year to address their policy challenges. While civil servants tend to be educated in disciplines with analytic and economic perspectives, DfG develops and applies creative methods for engaging citizens and making their experiences and contexts heard by policy-makers.