Cross-government design community— VISIT BLOG

Maintaining a thriving design community in government

The cross-government design community contains hundreds of talented user-centred design specialists working in government organisations throughout the UK. This active community is in constant dialogue on platforms such as slack and email discussing design patterns and service delivery.

It's important to celebrate successes and keep the community active by digging into important topics in more detail. Every few months we ran community events focused on specific themes in venues throughout the country (remote during the pandemic). We have held events in venues such as the Design Museum, Mary Ward House and Conway Hall.

During these events we had a mixture of government based speakers and special guests who’s work specifically related to the event theme. Over the years we have had great guest speakers such as Michael Beirut, Reginé Gilbert, Dan Hill, Anthony Burrill, George Aye and Ken Garland. We have covered important topics, such as, ‘Equity in the design process’ and 'Design, Health and Ethics'.

Building consistent role profiles and progression frameworks

When building out the design profession within government it was important to have a sense of consistency regarding role expectations across different departments. Alongside Tim Paul and other design leaders across government we developed clear role profiles and career progression frameworks to enable departments to thrive in their capability building initiatives. These could then be used to hire, manage and develop the hundreds of interaction, service and graphic designers across government.

Using design to build a strong org culture

We created many cultural assets that enabled people to work in better ways. Important principles were outlined on posters and stickers and permeated across different government departments. We created a GovDesign assets tumblr to enable teams across government to use these assets as they wished.

— VISIT BLOG