Lodestar
Interfaces for a digital government that emphasizes bureaucratic and data literacy.
UX: Tom van Wijland, Ece Günesen
ID: Isabelle Olsson, Julius Bahl
UX: Tom van Wijland, Ece Günesen
ID: Isabelle Olsson, Julius Bahl
How will citizens interact with their government in the next 10 years?
Lodestar is the fruit of design research and exploration with and for the Swedish public sector, developed during a 10-week collaborative project between Umeå Institute of Design and Försäkringskassan. This project had a participatory focus and resulted in mid-fidelity interface provocations for a digital government that emphasize bureaucratic + data literacy.
As we started reaching out to people and talking about their experiences, we found out that the welfare system is a bit like a machine, frustrating and stressful to navigate.
Names and other details may have been changed to respect confidentiality, images used with permission.
Our research efforts revolved around 4 key themes, and together they boil down to the following insights:
Process
Considering the mobility limitations of our target group (people who are sick), we wanted to approach co-creation in a way that is less restricted by time and space. Inspired by The Futures Bazaar, we created a web-based tool that allows the combination of random prompts to help us facilitate in-person workshops as well as share it within our networks to see how many interesting futures of government can be imagined and shared by the citizens.
The ‘rejection machine’ or the ‘empathy machine’ ?
Lodestar is the fruit of design research and exploration with and for the Swedish public sector, developed during a 10-week collaborative project between Umeå Institute of Design and Försäkringskassan. This project focused on the future interaction between citizens and their government through a participatory lens and resulted in mid-fidelity interface provocations.
Concept
With emerging legislation worldwide concerning the sharing and storage of citizens’ health data, we believe it’s crucial to foster resilience and literacy among populations through transparent services.
Research
Our methodology consisted of netnography, both planned and guerilla interviews and co-creative workshops as well as an interactive survey tool we’ve created that could be sent out in the wild to generate new future prompts.
We shifted our focus specifically on the people who have experienced both long-term and short term illness. Within this context, we’ve explored larger issues that might come up while talking about the relationship between an individual and a state such as; transparency, trust, digital and bureacratic literacy as well as the emotional qualities of such interactions.
You can explore the full, in-depth case study I’ve written on Medium, where I delve into the details, challenges, and insights of the project.
Insights
Our investigations into the Swedish context revealed that people are often dependent on various circles of care. These circles of care may consist of our family, friends, word-of-mouth experiences, healthcare providers as well as the institutions we interact with.
We focused on how far a governmental institution — such as Försäkringskassan — is situated from the citizens and how that distance affects the qualities of their interactions.
Project credits
2024 | Duration: 3 months
Ece Günesen, Hanxiong Zhang, Xingyu Liu
