Visual Design Thought in Harvard Public Policy
The Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, or simply Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), is an institution founded in 1936 that was built to specialize on public policy and administration (Boston Digital, n.d.). Formerly known as the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration, the HKS’s mission is to provide education geared towards improving government leadership, historically directed to responding to domestic and international challenges and contemporarily aligned with a goal of advancing the common good around the world (Harvard Kennedy School, n.d.). Composed of world-renowned academicians and having produced equally world-renowned alumni, the HKS is revered as a global thought authority in the study of public leadership, policy-making, and political discourse.
Unlike Harvard College with a lowest recorded acceptance rate of 3.19% for undergraduate freshmen in 2022 as reported by The Harvard Crimson, HKS as primarily a graduate school has a more open, more lenient, and higher acceptance rate at 20% (Gupta, 2022). In comparison, University of California Berkeley has a rate of 18%, Boston University has 20%, and New York University is at 21%, according to a 2020 data by the US News.
Among the programs offered at the HKS is the Executive Education Program in Behavioral Insights and Public Policy. It seeks to study how insights from economics, psychology, and the social sciences can be used towards creating effective public policy. Discourse on public policy and leadership is no new domain to me. As a former student leader and resident member of a political organization at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, educational discussions on politics, social issues, and public policy are recurrent activities in annual workshops that I have participated in, lasting multiple months every year. While my field as a practicing creative professional seems leagues away from the lines of public administration, my civic involvement has always inclined towards public service, and joining a program in this subject has always been a thought. As a UI/UX designer in the private sector and an Executive Diploma holder in Design Thinking, design theory has been a leverage in my admission to the HKS Program.
The application to the program consists of three distinct essays that seek to explore how relevant the program is to the applicant, how the applicant intends to use their professional expertise in studying the subject, and how the program will be of help to the applicant’s long-term goals. The applicant is also required to list their relevant professional training, and to submit their resume or CV for evaluation and perusal of the HKS admissions board.
In particular, the following excerpt elucidates the touch points and interpolations between design theory — specifically UI/UX design — and public policy:
“I have always aspired to work in public policy, and while my passion in visual and interactive design has brought me elsewhere, I believe my aspirations and my current position are not too far off from each other, at least in theory.
User interface and user experience design puts significant value on human behavior. Designing interaction and usability requires deep understanding of target users’ behavioral patterns, preferences, and even sentiments. After all, and on the more simplistic definition of the field, UI/UX design is creating a pleasant, purposeful, and easily-usable system that will solve users’ problems, hence the ties of UI/UX design with social psychology.
What UI/UX design produces are not simply collaterals of value within devices. They are not simply aesthetic outputs, or assets useful only to a system. Rather, they are answers to human questions, solutions to human obstacles, and decipherment to human puzzles. The most successful UI/UX designs are ones that have proven functional to the most number of stakeholders and effective in addressing these stakeholders’ concerns with purposive simplicity. To achieve this, they have to be:
A. Specialized to their target users with proper consideration to demographics
B. Carefully crafted to solve issues while avoiding creating more in the process
C. Simple, intuitive, and contributive towards fulfilling not only individual but also collective community goals
Having said this, UI/UX design is hence quite similar to public policy. In the human-centered nature of both UI/UX design and public policy lies an undeniable importance of understanding behavioral insights that will ensure their effectiveness and achievement of successful outcomes.”
Meanwhile, the following excerpt responds to the relevance of design professional practice in the study of government leadership and vice versa, and how design thinking can be applied in public policy:
“For us designers, vision is key. In my years of being a design professional, I have achieved professional development evidenced by multiple promotions and consistently positive peer feedback, buttressed by various professional certifications, and ultimately, by an expanding portfolio — and this is all in line with a vision to become a relative authority in my field. It is immensely vital for my career pathway to consistently pursue continuous education, most especially in the context of our rapidly evolving world dominated by technology. To stay up-to-date with modern-day design thinking principles is a must. It is my immediate goal to continue to persevere in keeping current with the demands of the design industry through relentless learning, while building a professional network of fellows whose ideology of creativity and visionary innovation are actively applied into socio civic engagement.
In the long-term, I aspire to become a thought leader not only in creativity and design but also in formally integrating design thinking into nation-building. I believe that complex social problems require creative solutions, and there should always be room for a visionary perspective when approaching public leadership and governance. I aim to eventually be able to bring with me my expertise in design onto the inner workings of public policy — such as the design principle of contrast that can be applied in distinction, comparison, and identification of priorities of action; the design principle of repetition to be applied in analyzing which properties of the more conventional policies should be removed or replicated; the design principle of proximity to facilitate unified and integrative collaboration among institutions and sectors; and the design principle of alignment to aid in the creation of policies that connect with national multisectoral objectives.”
Complex social problems indeed require creative solutions, and as mentioned above, there is a vast space for the application of design thinking in public policy. Artistic and innovative approaches hence must be welcomed in leadership and governance. After all, the Harvard Kennedy School does, and that should stand as a statement by itself.
References:
Harvard Kennedy School of Government (n.d.) Boston Digital. Retrieved May 20, 2022, from https://www.bostondigital.com/our-work/harvard-kennedy-school-government
Learn. Lead. Serve. (n.d.) Harvard Kennedy School. Retrieved May 20, 2022, from https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/about
Gupta, Nitika. (2022, March 01). Harvard Kennedy School Admissions 2022. Collegedunia. https://collegedunia.com/usa/college/2709-harvard-kennedy-school-cambridge/admission
Hamid, Rahem D., Orakwue, Nia L., (2022, April 01). Harvard College Accepts Record-Low 3.19% of Applicants to Class of 2026. The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/4/1/admissions-class-of-2026/
Top 100 — Lowest Acceptance Rates (2020) US News. Retreived May 20, 2022, from https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate
Disclaimer: The author is not associated with the Harvard University or the Harvard Kennedy School, other than being an admittee to the institution through an Executive Program that is set to begin on 2023. This article does not intend to be construed as an inference of association or affiliation. Rather, it aims only to share a story.
