News
Human-focused commissioning
New South Wales commissioners are using human-centred design principles to “… help place people at the heart of complex human service systems and commissioning processes.”
Human centred design is an approach that focuses on better understanding people’s experiences, needs and goals (individually and collectively) and considering the system or service ‘problem’ worth focusing on before jumping to solutions.
Commissioning NSW use the UK Design Council’s Double Diamond framework as a guide for their work. They’ve used the approach to apply human centred design to issues such as homelessness, child and family support services and private rental housing, procurement and contract management, community support services for victims of crime and to their own internal ways of working.
For us, our colleagues and partners, human centred design mindsets, skills and tools have helped to re-examine our concept of what it is to be a public servant and to value the benefits of listening to and learning from people with lived experience, iterating our ideas, working more in the open, acting as facilitators and using co-creation methods. I’ve seen people become much more empowered in their work because of the human centred design journey they’ve been on.