Rosenverse
Civic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Civic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake

Gold
Thursday, December 9, 2021 • Civic Design 2021
Share the love for this talk
Civic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake
Speakers: Shanti Mathew , Natalie Sims and Natalia Radywyl
Link:

Summary

When designing into inherently complex government services, civic designers must take a systemic approach. Too often service design focuses on public-facing and sometimes frontline staff-facing interventions, thereby placing the burden of successful service delivery on unempowered shoulders. As service delivery is the byproduct of many entities, interventions must systemically target all policy "layers", such as operations and policy, to be successful. In this presentation, the Public Policy Lab team will share their public policy 'layer cake'. Besides reflecting their affinity for baked goods, it’s a systems design framework for creating interventions at all levels of a public service, while also creating opportunities for equity.

Key Insights

  • Public services involve multiple layers of human roles with varying power, not just frontline staff.

  • Service design must address policies, protocols, and operational structures, not only public-facing tools.

  • The 'layer cake' framework maps where and what kind of power exists in government service delivery systems.

  • In the Family Pathways to Care project, co-design with caregivers and staff improved intake and referral processes.

  • Operational and policy level tools like standardized protocols and data dashboards support frontline service improvements.

  • Public feedback channels operating at the organizational level amplify family voices beyond individual service encounters.

  • Shared mental models and program typologies help actors at all levels align and make systemic decisions.

  • Civic participation tools (e.g., crowdsourcing or participatory budgeting) represent important 'consensus products' in public service ecosystems.

  • Designing for systemic change requires understanding and intervening in the interactions between people, tools, rules, and resources.

  • Systems change ultimately happens at the human scale by making invisible structures visible and open to redesign.

Notable Quotes

"Service delivery is led by frontline staff who tend to have the least amount of power in the system."

"Public services are a multi-layered culmination of people and products, not just a single entity."

"The layer cake framework helps notice where and what kind of power actually resides in systems."

"Even the best-designed public-facing tools need operational and policy support to succeed."

"We developed family-facing intake tools to make the service experience more transparent and equitable."

"A standard framework for collecting and responding to family feedback at the organizational level can increase their voice’s impact."

"Shared mental models serve as organizing frameworks that all players in the system can understand and make decisions within."

"Putting all programs together on easily comparable terms makes the system material and conceivable."

"Systems change happens at the human scale by making structures and humans visible so we can investigate and change them together."

"Designers hope to support the public in exercising agency and redistribute hegemonic power in public services."

Ask the Rosenbot
Rachel Posman
A Closer Look at Team Ops and Product Ops (Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin)
2020 • DesignOps Community
Vincent Brathwaite
Opener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Amy Brana Stuart
Rest in Peace Fly-in-fly-out Design
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Charlotte Lee
Theme 1 Intro
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Tanya Snook
Designing the team experience: Building culture through onboarding
2021 • Enterprise Community
Shanti Mathew
Civic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Helen Armstrong
Augment the Human. Interrogate the System.
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Maria Giudice
Empowering change: Reigniting purpose, passion and impact in research
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Nalini P. Kotamraju
An Organizational Story: Salesforce Lightning Design System
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Leisa Reichelt
Opening Keynote: Operating in Context
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Amy Evans
How to Create Change
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Maria Skaaden
Panel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Nova Wehman-Brown
We've Never Done This Before
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
How AI will Change DesignOps Tooling
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Peter Van Dijck
Hands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Kurt McCulloch
Faster alone, further together: Rebuilding collaboration in the age of AI research
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold

More Videos

Jerome “Axle” Brown

"Everyone wants to see themselves reflected in the research questions and findings."

Jerome “Axle” Brown

How to Use Self-Directed Learning to Ensure Your Research Insights are Heard and Acted Upon

March 11, 2021

Phil Gilbert

"We could create a sustainable culture of design and use it as our leading edge weapon of transformation."

Phil Gilbert

A Consistent Culture of Design

May 14, 2015

Kate Towsey

"Research’s role may shift to orchestrators of AI-synthesized insights and gap analyses rather than just primary data collectors."

Kate Towsey Basel Fakhoury Oren Friedman Graham Gardner

Participant Recruitment and Management Tools

March 12, 2026

Sohit Karol

"There’s been a fundamental shift in consumer products in the last five years driven by machine learning."

Sohit Karol

Designing Delightful Listening Experiences: Mixed Methods Research in the Age of Machine Learning

March 31, 2020

Christopher Taylor Edwards

"Empathy and trust develop through working together, not in isolation."

Christopher Taylor Edwards Valerie Roske

Design as a Team Practice, A Practical Guide to Cross-functional Collaboration

September 30, 2021

Sheryl Cababa

"Community engagement is a powerful lever often left out of systems thinking processes."

Sheryl Cababa

Expanding Your Design Lens with Systems Thinking

February 23, 2023

Francesca Barrientos, PhD

"It’s not just about doing the craft of design but also figuring out how design fits into the organization."

Francesca Barrientos, PhD

You Need Your Own Definition of Design Maturity

June 8, 2022

Allison Sanders

"Celebrating efforts, even when they’re not wins, helps people keep moving forward."

Allison Sanders

Operating with Purpose

January 8, 2024

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"We had to make everybody feel safe to participate in this exercise."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"Prototype" vs "Prototype"--Breaking Down and Rebuilding Our Understanding of What We Do

October 24, 2019