We provide content, processes and support to policymakers to tackle complex problems in a collaborative way. We run qualitative research, ask fundamental questions, challenge assumptions and test ideas that can lead to innovative solutions.
We synthesize and make sense of information, visualise systems and interactions, give form to policy concepts and make them tangible and relatable.
We identify user and system needs, engage stakeholders and facilitate cross-teams, sciences and policy collaboration and experiments to bring new practical and radical perspectives to current and future challenges.
Design for policy tools
Design tools make policies more tangible and collaborative, turning abstract ideas into experiences that can be explored and improved with users:
- Co‑creation workshops bringing policymakers, scientists and stakeholders together to frame problems and imagine alternatives.
- Prototyping of policy options, services or interfaces to test feasibility and usability early.
- Visual and participatory methods (journey maps, system maps, mock‑ups) to align diverse actors around shared solutions.
These approaches are used in initiatives like Futures Garden, the EU Harmonised Waste Sorting Labelling System, Intergenerational Fairness or the Water Resilience Experiment to bridge science, creativity and governance.
News (43)
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The Labelling Knowledge project is an internal organisational transformation initiative by the EU Policy Lab to support the development and implementation of labels as policy instruments and to create a space for critical thinking on their use.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Design for policy
As part of the Labelling knowledge project, the EU Policy Lab conducted an exploratory literature review to better understand the state of evidence-based information design on labels.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Design for policy
How can democracy cope with the combined pressures of digitalisation, AI, shifting citizen expectations and changing institutions? These are some of the questions at the heart of a new foresight study on the future of democracy.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Foresight
- Design for policy
Time is not a neutral backdrop to policymaking – questions of pace, timing and horizons have become central to what we govern. Learn more about our conversation at PolyFutures.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- EU policy lab
- Foresight
- Design for policy
- Behavioural insights
Our idea for this "off-site day" was simple: to bring those shaping EU policies and institutional processes into the same room as design experts working in innovation, human-centred transformation, and futures thinking.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- EU policy lab
- Design for policy
We invited participants to engage in an unusual exercise: a conversation with young EU citizens from the year 2040.
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- EU policy lab
- Design for policy
- Foresight
If Europe is to navigate an age of overlapping crises, it needs to cultivate new cultures of governance, not just new tools. Here is how the PolyFutures event imagined them.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- EU policy lab
- Design for policy
- Foresight
- Behavioural insights
Space is often discussed as if its future were already mapped out: more satellites, more launchers, greater competition, higher performance. Yet this framing leaves little room to question how these futures are imagined in the first place.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- EU policy lab
- Foresight
- Design for policy
When artists, scientists, and policymakers collaborate over time, new forms of sense-making become possible: weak signals are detected earlier, insights flow across disciplines, and the very definition of what counts as evidence broadens.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Design for policy
- Foresight
The EU Policy Lab launched a policy experiment exploring how a trauma‑informed approach can enrich ongoing work such as the Directorate-General for Agriculture work on Generational Renewal in Agriculture.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Foresight
- Behavioural insights
- Design for policy