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Skills Brief: Choosing an Assessment Technique

This brief explores general principles for assessing innovations, and focuses on three techniques that apply these principles. These three techniques are commonly used for policy questions, whether in the public or non-government sector, though again, some are also shared with private sector practices.

Specifically, we discuss (1) Design Thinking, (2) “Smart Policy Design and Implementation,” and (3) “Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation.” The last two are the names of specific adaptations of general approaches that have been developed at HKS. The goal of this brief is not to teach the details of these techniques—you will be able to find other sources of information on the techniques that are of most interest to you. This overview will help you understand the rationale behind the techniques, what the techniques do and don’t do, and which of the techniques are best adapted to different problems, and the phases in the solution search.

Problem Definition
Problem definition (also called problem specification) helps you define the scope of your work. Both the client or beneficiary and the implementing organization should participate in problem definition. This ensures that the perspectives, needs, and constraints of all the groups and individuals involved are considered. The process of defining a problem allows you to establish a common understanding of the issue and set realistic goals for the intervention.

Solution Exploration
Once the problem is defined, you can start generating and exploring ideas for solutions.

1 See Appendix 1: Themes Across Assessment Techniques for a full comparison.

Steps:

1.Empathize: Engage with people to understand their needs and how they think about world.

2 See Further Exploration for references.

solutions instead of relying only on historical data or best practices.

Assessment Technique 2: Smart Policy Design and Implementation

Smart Policy Design & Implementation (SPDI) is a problem-driven and collaborative approach to

evidence—through dialogue, training, support for innovation, and interactive tools for data

visualization. Compared with typical design thinking, SPDI puts more emphasis on systematic

3. Design: The joint policy-research team applies its collective expertise to design policy innovations that are feasible financially, administratively, and politically and supported by evidence.

PDIA is a learning by doing approach. It aims to achieve facilitated emergence5. Facilitated

2.Identify action steps: Break down your problem into smaller action items for engagement, then time and stage your engagement and solutions considering your contextual opportunities and constraints.

3.Take action: Try numerous small, experimental interventions in short quick cycles (sometimes acting on multiple solution ideas at a time).

While SPDI puts an emphasis on the collaboration between academics, researchers, and

practitioners, PDIA’s emphasis is on the tacit knowledge of practitioners and civil servants who have

In PDIA, the design phase and the implementation phase of solving complex problems is a

simultaneous process where experiential learning (or “action learning”) is an essential part of the

As an overarching principle, the nature of the problem and the associated innovation challenge drives the approach to the solution. Depending on this, each of the methods offer varying degrees of ease of implementation as well as different paces at which you might expect to generate actionable results. For example, if the challenge is to find a technical solution to a well-defined problem, design sprints are useful because this focuses on designing and testing of products and requires fewer actors in the exploration process. However, to understand complex problems, human motives and organizational intricacy is involved, we may need other methods to unpack the problem further.

Further Exploration

If you wish to further explore topics discussed in this brief, we recommend the following resources:

Human-Centered Design

• Design Kit: The Human-Centered Design Toolkit, IDEO
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References

Appendix 1: Themes Across Assessment Techniques