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35
Government Leaders Trained
6
Projects Emerged
1
National Policy Launched
THE CHALLENGE
We were asked to design a transformative learning journey for the government of the UAE together with IDEO and Palmwood. The nation’s goal is to empower future leaders by embedding creative mindsets and skills into the ways government officials think and work—enabling them to imagine and co-create meaningful solutions together with the people they serve through human-centered approaches.
THE TRANSFORMATION APPROACH
Through two new roles (Chief Design Officers and Civil Designers), the UAE government is transforming itself as a nation of designers. Our guiding principles for designing and delivering transformative learning experiences was through experiential learning, reflective process and emergent facilitation.
“We are so happy to see a project like this in the government, something that will actually change human beings and change the lives of humans.”
“I was able to redesign myself as a human, as a mother, as a director, as someone who would contribute to the UAE government. I feel that I am going to build myself more and more through design.”
"This is something new and different"
"This bootcamp widened my views, my understanding. It made me stretch more into the world and see how collaboration and empathy would work..."
"We can design the relation of the governments with each other. We can now design anything."
"We had to travel within to learn to be better creative leaders as well."
"I really learned how to ask the right questions."
We see this as a movement that brings as many people along as possible. It's purpose is to connect the people who serve with the people they serve."
THE IMPACT
During the 10-month co-design journey with the government, ATÖLYE designed and executed transformative learning experiences for high-potential “change agents” across government entities. The program aimed to unlock the creative potential of future “Chief Design Officers (CDO)”—an unprecedented title in the government of a nation.
All the efforts of the participants in this program led to the implementation of the UAQ Blue Economy Strategy project. This project truly had an impact at a national level.
Currently, the program is being rekindled after its inception and will be further rolled out in coming years at a broader scale. Stay tuned!
THE COMMUNITY LENS
As a parallel example of a radical collaboration within the kyu Collective, ATÖLYE’s unique value surfaced when ATÖLYE activated its local and international community—where it would simply not be possible for a traditional consultancy to be tasked with—and curated a multidisciplinary team. Two key partners in the design and delivery of the program from ATÖLYE’s global Community were the facilitation agency Mischief Makers and the design education company DSIL Global.
Human-centered design at the heart of government
Project Team
Project Team:
Aslı Sevinç Daver, Kerem Alper, Nazlı Cangönül, Onat Vural, Ali Özgür Arslan
Project Lead:
Mert Çetinkaya
Community:
Özgür Önurme (videography), Murathan Sırakaya (video editing), Mischief Makers (facilitation), DSIL (learning design, facilitation)
Project partners:
IDEO, Palmwood
Resources & Links
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