What are the possibilities afforded by prototyping in the development of public policy?
As a partial response to this question, Lucy Kimbell and Jocelyn Bailey propose in a 2017 article titled ‘Prototyping and the new spirit of policy-making’ “a framework for describing and assessing prototyping in policy-making, as a basis for further conceptual and empirical research.” While drawing on genealogies shaping prototyping practice, the authors establish defining characteristics of, and associated opportunities offered by, prototyping in policy-making. These include:
An experimental logic which can be either of a design science approach that validates requirements systematically, or an exploratory approach that treats prototyping as a creative synthesis moment. These perspectives can offer evidence for proposed policies or engage stakeholders in issue exploration and solution anticipation.
Uses throughout various stages of the design process. Prototyping can: elicit, explore and validate requirements; address complex contexts where analysis falls short, especially in understanding operational and delivery implications, and; facilitate communication and engagement with stakeholders and citizens.
Variability in pace. While prototyping can accelerate development through the validation of the resident experience of a proposal, certain contexts may require slower approaches. Participatory design distinguishes between 'fast' and 'slow' prototyping, where the latter allows exploration and adaptation within complex ecosystems.
In shifting attention to experiences or services involving multiple actors over time and not just physical or digital artifacts, prototypes materialise concepts and aid understanding of policy experiences.
Prototyping in policy-making engages a broad range of participants beyond traditional stakeholders. It extends consultation to involve users, citizens, experts, and service providers.
Together, these characteristics offer a normative account of what prototyping might be expected to achieve in public policy-making as “a flexible practice within the policy cycle, which closes the gap between policy intent and delivery.” As the authors conclude:
“Prototyping enables organisational learning by anticipating responses to public policy issues through making models of, and materialising, aspects of provisional solutions, enabling assessment of their delivery, acceptability and legitimacy. Prototyping can assemble and bring into relation a diverse constituency of actors involved in a policy issue, with distinct expertise, perspectives and knowledge. It can co-constitute a situated understanding of issues and how future policies might play out, foregrounding people’s experiences of a policy intervention via their material engagement with devices, objects and sites of action, making the practical and political implications of a policy graspable and meaningful.”
The authors take care, however, to point out that prototyping can “downplay challenges to the dominant neo-liberal consensus, dilute differences in political agency, and mask the politics inherent in deciding who, or what, co-emerges within a prototyping assemblage.” Gaining its acceptance in a system of accumulation which “proceeds through co-opting resistance to its ideology”, the generative possibilities of the practice of prototyping must be tempered with the risk of the absorption of dissent.
Read the article here.