What's an object lesson to show the different levels of design for public services?
In short: give three tasks to different people. One plays the citizen and designs her own sandwich. One plays the expert and designs the sandwich alone. One plays the consultant who designs the sandwich with the citizen. Finally compare the results.
A bit of context: why I'm playing with objects
My wife is a pastor and she is an inspiration. For many years she has worked with children. That's something you can clearly see in her preaching style. she often uses object lessons. She makes her preaching tangible with objects and interactions. For a sermon about priorities in life she would fill a jar with stores of different sizes to show that you have to put the important first. Otherwise it doesn't get all in.
These objects lesson often make something complex tangible and memorable. So obviously I wanted to try this in my classes.
The for, with, by sandwich
To make the difference between design made for people, design made with people and design made by people I used a sandwich object lesson.
- Design For: An "expert" was tasked to design a sandwich for a citizen based on what she already knew
- Design By: A citizen was tasked to design her own favorite sandwich
- Design With: A second expert was tasked to ask two questions to the citizen, based on this this expert designed a first version of the sandwich, then showed it and got two pieces of feedback from the citizen. The expert then made a second version of the sandwich.
After that the sandwiches designs were revealed. and could be used to show the difference between these three design approaches.
This article was written and illustrated by hand on a refurbished Remarkable II tablet. The handwritten text was converted to typed text with the Connect Service by Remarkable. If you are curious you can download the original note below.
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