Toolkit Type: Tool/Toolset

This is canvas and background guidance around a set of principles for co-design, inspired by the principles developed by the NSW Council of Social Services. The principles are: Outcomes-focused, Inclusive, Participative, Respectful, Adaptive. The canvas includes an example case study.

Features: Examples or Cases

[Now defunct. Link goes to internet archive from 2018, when MindLab closed]. One of the pioneers of public sector design, Mindlab, developed a set of tools to find and define problems as well as new approaches to solving them. This toolset contains some of the most commonly used in the design practice (user journey, pattern recognition, etc).

Features: Techniques

This resource focuses on inclusive design, a methodology that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity, including those with limited abilities. The resource includes a guide on inclusive design, multiple short-films and a 20-minute documentary, as well as activity cards that follow 5 phases of a design process.

Features: Examples or Cases, Techniques, Video guidance

There is a free and paid version of this toolkit and an associated workshop offered by the publishers. The free version of the kit provides tools to structure your thinking when designing a service that includes machine learning elements. The core idea is that you first describe a user journey in a physical or digital space, and then use the materials from the kit to brainstorm service concepts in that space. The core materials include: - A booklet summarising key concepts for designing IA…

Features: Glossary, Tactics, Techniques

This canvas guides policy makers to derive specific policies and regulatory mechanisms in an agile and iterative manner – integrating both design thinking and evidence based policy making. An associated White Paper provides background on the approach.

Features: Examples or Cases

14 methods and 3 recipes suggesting how to combine them, associated with a guide book available for sale by the toolkit publisher. Accompanying each method: Purpose, Outcomes, How to do it, and Tips as well as a worked example, to help readers understand how the method and associated template can be used at the early stage of designing an innovative service.

Features: Tactics, Techniques, Tips&Tricks

The GovLab's Public Problem Solving Canvas is an online interactive canvas based on twenty questions to create and develop your public interest project. These twenty questions are designed to help you refine your understanding of the problem and those whom it affects; express your Big Idea; and turn that idea into an actionable strategy in the real world to the end of improving people's lives.

Features: Interactive diagnostic

The term data collaborative refers to a new form of collaboration, beyond the public-private partnership model, in which participants from different sectors — including private companies, research institutions, and government agencies — can exchange data to help solve public problems. This resource outlines 8 Phases for designing and implementing a data collaborative (partnership) at an institutional level. The online resource includes examples, enablers, tools, and resources for…

Features: Guiding framework, Tactics, Techniques

This mini-book is based around the Cynefin framework, a contexutalisation and sense-making framework developed by Dave Snowden. The resource provides an overview of the Cynefin framework and use of narrative research, guidance and a tool for developing shared sense-making, and tools and guidance for developing a portfolio of experiments for different types of problems, distinguishing between complicated and complex problems. The publisher requires a free login in exchange for downloading the…

Features: Guiding framework

The resource was designed to help organisations: develop a clearer understanding of the range of purposes of collaborations, reflect on the partnerships they have established, and focus on ways to strengthen new and existing partnerships by engaging in discussion about issues and ways forward. The resource contains guidance as well as an interactive partnership assessment tool. Although it was created with the health sector in mind, it is relevant for other sectors as well. For innovation…

Features: Checklist, Interactive diagnostic, Techniques