Design Research Artefacts for Knowledge Co-creation with Civil Servants Supporting Migrants: A Case Study

What is it about?

When tackling challenges of the public sector, it's important to include civil servants who have direct contact to the residents. However, when inviting them to research activities, it's important to consider their workload and positionality. We used three different tools–or artefacts–for this purpose, mind maps, proto-personas and notebooks. We invited civil servants who are working with migrants in Espoo and Helsinki to collaboratively create knowledge with us by using these artefacts. We noticed how this helped with civil servants to reflect on complex topics such as trust and integration, and it helped us to set the ground for the project activities. We share our practical learnings in this paper.

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Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The diverse set of artefacts enabled collaborative sensemaking, empathizing, and reflecting on complex concepts such as societal trust and integration. By reflecting on the choices of the artefacts, their design and application in the given context, we share practical learnings for conducting research in the public sector. We emphasize the importance of translational and participatory aspects that such artefacts enable in multi-stakeholder environments.