Systems Innovation work at Policy Lab UK

During a design placement at Policy Lab UK, I was part of a team delivering systems innovation work for a central government department. To deliver the co-designed outputs, we used a framework developed by Jennie Winhall and Charles Leadbeater from The Systems Innovation Initiative in Copenhagen.

Systems innovation involves identifying levers to create shifts in the system. These are called 4 keys: Purpose, Relationships, Power and Resources. Creating a new system involves a new sense of purpose, a change in relationships across the system, shifts in power that determines how resources flow.

Additionally, there are 12 roles and three system levels where change comes about: the micro, the meso and the macro.

Co-defining the problem across levels of the system in Workshop 1 with public sector experts, cross government, local authority and lived experience stakeholders.

During the ideation workshop, participants completed an ideas canvas similar to Policy Lab’s idea development sheet. After the workshop a period of reflection, discussions and prioritisation with the commissioning team took place to reach a shortlist of viable solutions.

To ease the drawing of storyboards I designed a stencil with a selection of ready made shapes for participants to use.

We used the 3 Horizons Framework as a tool to support stakeholders in imagining how they could transition towards a new system.

Throughout the project, we repeatedly returned to the 4 keys and the 12 roles of systems innovation along with the set of values that were agreed by the stakeholders.

I was responsible for the graphic design of the final output reports which included a series of visualisations. The example here is from a set showing the experiences of the ethnographic research participants.

The project outputs included a set of recommendations, ‘shifts’ towards a future system, based on the prototype ideas. Using the 4 keys as a lens, the final report presented the challenges and opportunities in the current system and the vision for a future system.

I am unable to show some work due to the confidential nature of the project and for privacy reasons.

While on placement, I also helped design Policy Lab UK’s latest prospectus.

View Policy Lab prospectus here