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Summary
At the April Civic Design Community call, hear from new community curator Kara Kane. She shares her experience scaling and leading the UK government’s user-centered design (UCD) communities and International Design in Government community while working at the Government Digital Service. Kara talks about how communities of practice are central to the transformation of public services. The communities she developed built design capability, aimed to create a culture of equity and inclusion and were core to developing and delivering standards and guidance for government.
Key Insights
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Communities of practice require active leadership and support; they are not self-sustaining.
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Diverse engagement formats help include participants with varying access, time, and tools.
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User-centered design communities in UK government encompass multiple sub-communities like user research, content design, and accessibility.
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Community-led training programs can scale by enabling facilitators outside the core team to run sessions.
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Open collaboration models, like the UK government design system, rely on community contributions managed by dedicated working groups.
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Case studies and themed community meetups with clear agendas build capability and demonstrate best practices across complex government organizations.
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Building design culture depends on shared principles, visible artifacts (like posters and stickers), and spaces to connect across silos.
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Efforts to increase diversity and inclusion include dedicated recruitment events, accessible training, and codes of conduct.
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Community involvement is central to iterating standards and guidance, ensuring they meet real user needs and organizational goals.
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Sustaining community work and making the business case internally can be difficult without consistent senior stakeholder engagement.
Notable Quotes
"There’s no such thing as a self-organized community, in my opinion. They just don’t work."
"Communities are the glue. They bring together work across silos, people, and practice."
"Design culture is about creating ways for people to collaborate, sharing tools, language, and practice."
"We always tried to leave time in meetups for people to chat and get to know each other."
"The government UK design system only works if the community contributes."
"We developed training in an agile way, iterating based on feedback and scaling by training other trainers."
"Building diverse engagement options helps ensure no one is excluded due to tools or time constraints."
"The team was defunded because we failed to engage enough internally and make our case early enough."
"Creating a maturity model would have helped prove the value and impact of user-centered design across public sector teams."
"International government design communities can share learnings and scale user-centered design beyond national borders."
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