Reframing Design Maturity: a New Perspective on the Development of Design in Public Organizations

Although design is a core activity of public organizations, the dominant perspective to this day is that public organizations are void of design. Existing design maturity models based on this perspective thus do not reflect, nor do justice to the practice of design in public organizations. In this conceptual paper we therefore propose to reframe design maturity as a matter of versatility and alignment - i.e. as an organization’s ability to tailor their design activities to the different design tasks it faces, while establishing productive interactions with other concurrent design activities. This offers a new perspective on how design can be fostered in public organizations. This paper proposes four ways in which this can be done. As such, it contributes to the evolving discourse on design in public organizations.