Karen Ingerslev and Trine Naldal: Citizens as co-designers: facilitating systemic change at the policy level

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Relating Systems Thinking and Design
RSD5 Symposium
OCAD University, Toronto, Canada
October 13-15, 2016
PhD Karen Ingerslev and MA Trine Kiil Naldal
Citizen Design Aarhus
Citizens as co-designers
- facilitating systemic
change at the policy level

2. © Borgerdesign Aarhus 2
3 tensions
• Who are the experts?
• The duality of problems
• Plug and play vs. mind shift

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What is citizen design aarhus?
• Full scale business case
• We test how to inspire and facilitate systemic
change at policy level - with citizens as co-
designers
• And with healthcare professionals, civic
society, businesses etc.
Our ambition is to change the mindset and thus
the values and actions of the decision makers by
bringing in new perspectives (building in the
empathy)

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Tension no.1
Who are the experts?
So who is on the design team?
• Citizens?
• Designers?
• Healthcare professionals?

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• What if our society was able to contain life’s ups and downs?
• What if our society was able to contain young people being both smart and vulnerable?
Søren: The 110% Klara: Living up to Facebook Lea: It isn’t math
The pain according to Our experts

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the citizen perspective

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The duality of problems
How do we build in the duality of the problem;
the pain from a citizen perspective and the pain from a
system perspective – into the framing of the problem,
insights and solutions?
Tension no.2

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Pain from a system perspective
Anxiety is the diagnosis most people suffer from and that we spend
the most money on as society
75 % of all psychiatric or psychological problems debut during the
teenage years
• How can we prevent vulnerability among young adults becoming
psychiatric disease?

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Plug and play solutions vs mind shift
Can we generate mind shift by
building empathy and learning
into the solutions, we feed back to the
systems – in order to facilitate new types
of actions from the board of directors
Tension no.3

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Building in the empathy and new actions

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Discussion of the 3 tensions
• Who are the experts?
• The duality of problems
• Plug and play vs. mind shift

13. © Borgerdesign Aarhus 13
Relating Systems Thinking and Design
RSD5 Symposium
OCAD University, Toronto, Canada
October 13-15, 2016
Karen Ingerslev and Trine Kiil Naldal
Citizen design Aarhus
Questions? Comments?
Thank you