Designing for wellbeing

increasingly seen as active users or co-producers of services, and public
organisations are viewed as service deliverers instead of as a governmental
institution. This view challenges the traditional production of public services
and opens up opportunities for service design, including co-design
and human-centred approaches.
Our experiences from earlier cases and the ones presented in this
chapter support the view that design approaches and practices like empathic,
visual and participatory methods can be applied in cross-functional
public-service development projects. However, besides experiencing the
potential benefits, we have also faced challenges in the collaboration
between designers or design students and public organisations due to
different conventions, expectations and lack of a common vocabulary. For
example, unrealistic expectations may result if people don’t understand
that the role of design goes beyond concrete improvements in current
practices and environments. In this chapter we have discussed how design
can be utilised in the public sector for framing the design challenge, as
a decision-making tool and for promoting discussion. In order to create
successful collaboration in the future, we think that both designers and
public organisations should become aware of the diverse meanings and
opportunities of co-design.
71 · Co-design with the public sector