Policy Design
Using a design lens to reflect on my equity-based policy design work.
Qualitative research
Human-centered design
Summary
I love solving problems for people. This is what originally led me to the environmental policy field as a qualitative researcher. I worked on a research project that explored urban tree equity in Canada. This was later released as a report titled Urban Forests: Bringing the Canopy to All. What follows is a reflection of this work through a design thinking lens, and how it ultimately led to me expanding into the design field and human-centered design.
The brief
The top-down power dynamics of policy-making
Reading Davis Levine’s breakdown of the “fault lines” in public service helped me name a dynamic I had felt but couldn’t fully articulate while working in the policy space:that even well-intentioned research is often shaped more by political direction than by lived experience.
The article describes a divide between policy makers (those “above the fault line”) and service delivery teams (those “below”), and how this divide influences not only workflows but mindsets. Policy teams look upwards to political mandates; service delivery teams look outward to the everyday struggles and needs of citizens. What happens when you’re trying to do human-centered research in a structure that’s inherently not people-centered? You hit a wall.
That’s exactly what happened in my work on urban tree equity. While the whole aim of the project was to center equity and lived experiences, our project was still shaped by the current limitations of the policy-making mindset:
Due to funding constraints (a common challenge in this field and not a reflection of the company), I interviewed subject matter experts from BIPOC communities rather than conducting broader community-based research. This highlights a wider systemic gap in support for environmental equity work.
We framed our recommendations in a way that would resonate with government decision-makers — again, not unique to the company I worked with, but a reality of working within a policy landscape that often values stakeholder language over lived experiences.
The takeaway
Ironically, we had recommendations for equity, but not a process rooted in equity. I truly enjoyed working on this project and thought the takeaways were extremely important and eye-opening. But that dissonance stayed with me.
My approach
Design as a path to reversing the power dynamics
That’s why I began to explore design thinking — not just as a methodology, but as a shift in who gets to shape systems.
Qualitative research, if not done carefully, can be an extractive and top-down approach. As a researcher and designer, I see my role as creating space for underrepresented voices to shape the process, centering their lived experiences with care, and ensuring that solutions reflect their needs without speaking over or for them.
Reflection
Why policy needs design
Knowing what I know now, I see so much potential for design thinking as a tool for policy making. Let’s go back to the study on urban tree equity and take a ‘theoretical’ design centered lens to see how this study could be expanded on.
While the original study highlighted that different communities utilize and value green spaces for different reasons, it didn’t go into the solutions that people envisioned for themselves. More community food gardens? Pesticide-free zones for foragers? Areas designated for picnicking? Safety measures on trails? Pinpointing where people need better access to transit services to access green spaces?
From a combined design-thinking and policy-making lens, the challenge isn’t simply to recommend more community involvement or equitable green-space policies, but to co-design those solutions with people. By bringing user-centric methods — co-design workshops, journey mapping, participatory prototyping — into the heart of policy development, we surface the real, locally imagined fixes (like community food gardens, pesticide-free foraging zones, designated picnic areas, or adjusted bus routes for lower-income neighbourhoods). In this way, policy doesn’t end as a set of proposals; it becomes a living service blueprint co-created with communities, translating equity-focused ideas directly into the services people need.
Design thinking alone won’t fix systemic inequity, and it isn’t the only solution. But it offers us a toolkit — and more importantly, a mindset — to begin questioning where power lies, and how we might share it more meaningfully by centering around the ‘user’ (or in this case, the community).
As a researcher and designer, I hope to continue to stay curious, critical, and committed to bridging the gap between policy and design.
Get in touch!
Living and working in Tkaronto, an area that has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Huron-Wendat for thousands of years. I come with respect for this land that I am on today, and for the people who have and do reside here.
