Critical service design for government innovation

This paper contributes to the discussion on the roles and pedagogy of design, based on a case study of collaboration between government and academia. The authors are design practice researchers and civil servants and present a collaborative case study from Spring 2023 that aimed at developing anticipatory innovation capability in the UK’s Government Digital Service, involving postgraduate service design students and exploring critical service design (Salinas, 2022, 2023) as an alternative way of contributing to the formulation of public policies and services. The collaboration led to new competencies in public design for those involved and resulted in the creation of a new in-house anticipatory innovation unit in government. The authors draw on the student proposal ‘Ministry of Biodiversity’as an exemplar to contextualize and illustrate their collaborative practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the insights gained from this collaboration regarding the roles and pedagogy of design in government.