Civic Innovation & Designing for People

Governments worldwide are looking for innovative ways to better serve the public and provide services more efficiently and effectively. This course uses examples from current and recent innovation efforts to investigate what ‘innovation’ means in government. In particular, the course will introduce how the Agile and human-centered methodologies used to design and build successful consumer products are applied in government to design more effective policies, programs, and services. The course aims to show students how they can work creatively in policy environments to develop new people-centered solutions to complex social problems. To this end, the course takes a blended approach to learning, combining hands-on design studios that teach actionable methods with readings and lectures on analytical frameworks for developing new approaches to serving people.