Toolkit Features: Techniques

A community sourced set of best practices and principles to help incorporate human-centered design into a product development process. The website contains dozens of methods organised by process, difficulty, time required, and outcomes. Each method contains an overview, detailed, steps, resources, and examples or cases. The methods are framed in terms of private sector product or service development but can be adapted to a public sector context.

Features: Examples or Cases, Facilitators guide, Guiding framework, Tactics, Techniques

“Scenes” is a tool and a method to create visual stories about products and services fast, collaboratively and iteratively. It is intended for leaders and professionals of all industries to shape their ideas and scenarios in the form of fun illustrative storyboards without the need of refined drawing skills. It uses storytelling instead of long functional specifications for new or redesigned services or concepts. It contains free, downloadable and printable templates for professionals to…

Features: Examples or Cases, Tactics, Techniques, Video guidance

This playbook defines smart cities through human experiences, including 3 "mindsets" (lenses to understand) and 6 "plays" (ways to start). Originally developed for the City of Calgary, Canada, it offers ways to document, prioritize and advocate for individual human experiences at the nexus of networked technology, data and urbanism. It promotes embracing complexity and designing responsive systems, policies and governance around people for people-centered smart cities. Both PDF and slide deck…

Features: Checklist, Examples or Cases, Techniques

The Open Government Costing Tool is a Microsoft Excel based application designed to support the collection and calculation of the cost of open government programs. This tool was created as a companion to the Open Government Costing Framework and Methods, which details an approach to estimating the cost of open government programs. This tool is a template in which users can directly enter data collected on input units and unit costs of an open government program and automatically generate an…

Features: Tactics, Techniques

This is a collection of tools for an Open Government Partnership communications team, including the OGP's tips on blogging, branding, talking points, press guide, etc. While this is specifically created for Open Government Partnership partners, it it can be adapted for other public sector initiatives, services, or programs.

Features: Tactics, Techniques, Tips&Tricks

A curated set of 18 canvases that walk you through the steps needed for creating services & products using the combined principles and methodologies of agile development, lean startup, and design thinking. The publisher's intent is for you to reach business objectives in an iterative and human-centric way. In adapting to a public sector context, "customers" may need to be re-framed as stakeholders or service users. GitHub source content available. Includes how-to videos.

Features: Guiding framework, Tactics, Techniques, Video guidance

Inclusive design is designing for the full range of human diversity in ability, language, income, culture, gender, age and other characteristics. This toolkit includes a series of cards to use early in a design process to help sketch, plan, prototype and design content, interactions and processes. It covers inclusive physical, audio, visual, and thought experiences. PDF and editable Word document available via the publisher's Github page.

Features: Techniques, Tips&Tricks

The U.S. Public Participation Playbook is a resource for government managers to evaluate and build better services through public participation using best practices and performance metrics. Based on discussions with US Federal Government managers and stakeholders, the publishers identified five main categories that should be addressed in all programs, whether digital or offline. Within each category they identified 12 unifying plays to start with, each including a checklist to consider,…

Features: Checklist, Examples or Cases, Techniques

The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) is a method of analysing and changing the lives of people experiencing poverty and disadvantage. It is a participatory approach based on the recognition that all people have abilities and assets that can be developed to help them improve their lives. The SLA Toolkit For Wales provides practical tools to help people with participatory community development. The toolkit describes what the SLA approach is and how it can be used. The appendices then contain…

Features: Tactics, Techniques, Tips&Tricks

A toolkit targeting journalists and includes concrete guidance on how to use their rights to access information. It is based on a comparative analysis of the access to information laws in the region covered by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has 56 participating states in Europe, Central Asia and North America; of these 45 have legal provisions on the right of access to information held by public bodies which are reviewed in this analysis. It is available in 13…

Features: Tactics, Techniques, Tips&Tricks