Design Policy Issues N° 1

Design is becoming a strategic lever for innovation policies in Europe. Together with innovation, it is feeding the sustainable development of private and public sectors for increasing competitiveness, growth and jobs. In particular, the European Commission has promoted the EDII Initiative to support the uptake of design culture and through this nurture the EU socio-economical capital. DeEP – Design in European Policies, is one of the funded EDII projects focused on mainstreaming an evaluation culture within design policies. This stands on multiple souls: the link between design and innovation, the awareness around design policies, and the reinforcement of a policy evaluation culture. As part of this, the forecast scenario envisions tools to orienteer policy makers in their future tasks, helping them understand the potential of design in business innovation. The complex path envisioned will surely take longer than a two-years project to be fulfilled. Nevertheless, we wish for this to be the first step toward a design-driven funding/evaluation system, based on radical efficiency, open data, and transparency. DeEP envisions an open, shared, transparent, generative policy evaluation system for design policies. This is our overarching challenge driving an exciting research journey that we hope will ultimately aim at more effective policymaking.