Designing for missions: how design can unlock a different future for government
Government is often built around constraints — rules, risk, and process. But what if we shifted focus? What if we designed for possibility, participation, and real change?
At the event on “How design can support a mission-driven government” hosted by the University of the Arts London Purpose Lab and The Future Governance Forum, we explored how mission-led design can transform government. Not as a side project or innovation lab, but as a fundamental way of working.
This isn’t about design as aesthetics or service tweaks. It’s about mobilising people around shared causes — from making sure everyone has healthy, affordable food to reimagining local economies and public spaces. It’s about building movements, not just managing systems.
1. From crisis mode to redesigning the future
During the pandemic, we made bold decisions because we had to. We prioritised food, housing, and care over red tape. We cut through process and focused on outcomes.
Now, we need that same urgency — not just in crises, but in how we design the future.
Design has the power to signal change, to create momentum where nothing seems possible. It can shift focus from what’s broken to what’s emerging.
Take the Netherlands: a country where cycling isn’t just a transport choice but a cultural movement shaped by community action, public policy and the design of streets, cities and daily life. Or playgrounds that are more than play spaces — designed through activism, enterprise and public investment to be hubs of civic life.
These are not small interventions — they are proof of what happens when design is embedded in missions.
2. Missions as a way of working
Missions are not the same as strategies, policies or action plans. They are ways to mobilise people across different disciplines, organisations and communities.
Government isn’t set up for this. Traditional models separate design from economics, policy from practice, and community from decision-making. But mission-led design challenges this:
- It shifts from process-driven to outcome-driven ways of working, focusing on what really matters.
- It embeds design in the “hard” disciplines — engineering, economics and policy — to tackle systemic challenges.
- It creates new architectures for participation, ensuring that change isn’t reliant on individuals or short-term projects.
To embed this approach, we need to rethink how we build capability, power and governance.
3. Beyond government design labs: creating place-based design ecosystems
Many governments have experimented with design labs. But to truly embed design in mission-driven government, we need something more systemic.
📍 Cross-sector mission teams — frontline teams, policymakers, businesses and communities working as part of one system, testing and learning together.
📍 Neighbourhood-based experimentation hubs — where residents, councils and local organisations actively shape and test solutions together.
📍 Regional mission residencies — professionals across public, private and civic sectors spending time immersed in place-based design work.
This isn’t just about government. Anchor institutions — universities, hospitals, businesses, and cultural organisations — have a role to play too. They are landowners, educators, employers and civic leaders. They must become part of mission teams, not just funders or advisers.
4. Devolution by design
Mission-led design isn’t just about making services better. It’s about redesigning the architecture of government itself.
- Moving from siloed teams to cross-council mission-based teams.
- Aligning frontline teams to neighbourhoods and communities, making services more rooted in local strengths.
- Rethinking the infrastructure of government, from workforce development to data, digital and financing models.
This is not just devolution to councils — it’s about how power is distributed across communities, organisations and movements.
5. Governing in partnership
Government cannot do this alone. Governing in partnership means more than just sharing power between institutions — it’s about blending formal and informal governance.
- Deliberative democracy — using citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting and civic juries to shape missions.
- Designing with people, not for them — ensuring participation isn’t a one-off exercise but part of how government works.
- Shaping national policy to support local mission-led change — making sure funding, legal frameworks and accountability structures enable long-term missions, rather than just pilots.
6. A call to action: let’s be a testbed for mission-led design
It was great to see old faces and new working on missions and design and we’re doing work here in Adur and Worthing taking a missions-based approach which started with Our Plan around a set of mission areas, and very much inspired by our Chief Executive, Catherine Howe — who roots this in a Venn diagram of design, digital and democracy. Do read her inspiring blog posts, and we’re privileged to have her leading our work as one of the top 25 thinkers globally on local government!
Over the next few blog posts, I’ll share some more on our thinking and doing in this space. We’re very keen to work with other places and organisations to test, learn and grow solutions around missions, and in particular in the context of devolution.
What does mission-led design mean in your work?
