ABSTRACT
In general, the design of solutions for the public sector requires sensitive knowledge about the social and cultural dynamics of citizens. Consequently, the challenge is adapting the diverse design tools and processes to the specific realities of each culture. In Chile, due to its history with modernisation of public services, complexity presents itself when the needs of citizens and institutions are taken into account to determine the precise actions that would reduce resistance to change. In Chile, many of the political decisions in the post military-dictatorship (1973–1990) period were aimed at strengthening a weakened public sector and an invisible civil society. During the first government of Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010), numerous public institutions were strengthened; however, the citizens declared themselves unsatisfied because these services did not attend to their needs or deliver pertinent solutions to their problems. Aware of the low satisfaction of citizens, in 2013 the Public Innovation Laboratory (LIP) was created with the purpose of contributing to innovating the public sector. The LIP team brings together researchers, professionals and students from different knowledge areas to work from a project-grounded research perspective, reflecting on the action and reinterpreting outside the action. LIP has developed projects for the elderly, public spaces, transportation, culture, building, sustainability and health, among others. In this chapter, two projects developed by LIP are described to illustrate the complexity of design in cases where the impact of solutions is or may be at a national level. This chapter seeks to (1) reflect on the complexity of this transformation from citizen-individual to citizen-community and how it affects design, and (2) raise the contribution of co-creation methodologies as a transformation tool for the individual and for activation of communities.
