An Introduction to Bill Fulton, The Design Lab’s Visiting Policy Designer

An Introduction to Bill Fulton, The Design Lab’s Visiting Policy Designer

An Introduction to Bill Fulton, The Design Lab’s Visiting Policy Designer

An Introduction to Bill Fulton, The Design Lab’s Visiting Policy Designer

How might we help San Diego leverage policy and design to impact the common good.

Policy and design are two important societal decision-making drivers that usually don’t go together. But together they can be very powerful – and The Design Lab hopes to combine the two in ways that will help move the important issues in the San Diego region forward.

Public policy is the art of crafting a course of action that government agencies can take in order to achieve a desired outcome – reducing homelessness, for example, or increasing the use of public transit in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The policy is usually crafted without those it affects – in a think tank, for example, or by legislative analysts in Sacramento, or thrown together in the political hothouse of a City-County or County Board of Supervisors meeting. The first can be too theoretical, not reflective of real-world experience, and too often driven by the ideological perspective of the think tank or the legislative committee. The second is usually the result of bargaining among politicians, meaning there’s not much focus on intentionality.

By introducing a design mindset into the policy process, policymakers can begin to overcome both of these limitations. They can get down and dirty in the real world to get more real-time feedback from what design calls “users” – perhaps not the right term, since individuals don’t always “use” policy even though it affects them. And together, we can bring more intentionality to the process of policymaking by creating a thoughtful feedback loop that elected officials will have a hard time ignoring – because users of policy are, after all, constituents as well.

On May 1, 2023, The Design Lab will add Bill Fulton to its staff as Visiting Policy Designer. Bill is an experienced urban planner and former elected official who has held leadership positions in the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors, including as Mayor of Ventura and Planning Director for the City of San Diego. He began to think deeply about how policy is designed – and how it could be designed better – when he stepped away from these intense public roles and entered academia full-time as Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston.

Bill thought a lot about how public policy, especially at the local level, so often seems to fall short and doesn’t really achieve its intended outcome. This is especially true in the world of land use and housing, which he has both operated on and studied (often in collaboration with me) for many years. In his recent book, “Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate”, Bill notes that sometimes, people in positions of influence want to adopt a policy in order to look good (or because they have to), but they don’t really want the outcome because it’s politically inconvenient.

Place and Prosperity by William Fulton | An Island Press book

All of this is why the Design Lab is the perfect place for Bill to try to improve the policy design process – and San Diego is the perfect region to test these ideas. We think it’s time to confront, head-on, the deficiencies in the traditional policymaking process at the local level and see how design methods and thinking can improve the process, the policies themselves, and the outcomes.

Because most of San Diego’s policymaking occurs downtown at the city, the county, and SANDAG (the regional planning agency), Bill will be setting up shop at UCSD’s Park & Market Building in Downtown San Diego, where he’ll be able to interact not just with people from UCSD but also from the Burnham Center for Community Advancement, the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, and many others who are deeply involved in the policymaking process in San Diego. Working with others at the Design Lab and UCSD and many others in the community, he will explore how we can use a design lens to tackle major issues in the region, especially the persistent and difficult issue of housing affordability.

So if you’ve got a policy problem – or you are frustrated that policy around something you care about isn’t being crafted well or isn’t leading to the desired outcomes – contact Bill to talk and see whether there’s a way to use design more intentionally to craft public policy in San Diego that really works.

– Mai Nguyen, Director

An Introduction to Bill Fulton, The Design Lab’s Visiting Policy Designer

How might we help San Diego leverage policy and design to impact the common good.

Policy and design are two important societal decision-making drivers that usually don’t go together. But together they can be very powerful – and The Design Lab hopes to combine the two in ways that will help move the important issues in the San Diego region forward.

Public policy is the art of crafting a course of action that government agencies can take in order to achieve a desired outcome – reducing homelessness, for example, or increasing the use of public transit in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The policy is usually crafted without those it affects – in a think tank, for example, or by legislative analysts in Sacramento, or thrown together in the political hothouse of a City-County or County Board of Supervisors meeting. The first can be too theoretical, not reflective of real-world experience, and too often driven by the ideological perspective of the think tank or the legislative committee. The second is usually the result of bargaining among politicians, meaning there’s not much focus on intentionality.

By introducing a design mindset into the policy process, policymakers can begin to overcome both of these limitations. They can get down and dirty in the real world to get more real-time feedback from what design calls “users” – perhaps not the right term, since individuals don’t always “use” policy even though it affects them. And together, we can bring more intentionality to the process of policymaking by creating a thoughtful feedback loop that elected officials will have a hard time ignoring – because users of policy are, after all, constituents as well.

On May 1, 2023, The Design Lab will add Bill Fulton to its staff as Visiting Policy Designer. Bill is an experienced urban planner and former elected official who has held leadership positions in the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors, including as Mayor of Ventura and Planning Director for the City of San Diego. He began to think deeply about how policy is designed – and how it could be designed better – when he stepped away from these intense public roles and entered academia full-time as Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston.

Bill thought a lot about how public policy, especially at the local level, so often seems to fall short and doesn’t really achieve its intended outcome. This is especially true in the world of land use and housing, which he has both operated on and studied (often in collaboration with me) for many years. In his recent book, “Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate”, Bill notes that sometimes, people in positions of influence want to adopt a policy in order to look good (or because they have to), but they don’t really want the outcome because it’s politically inconvenient.

Place and Prosperity by William Fulton | An Island Press book

All of this is why the Design Lab is the perfect place for Bill to try to improve the policy design process – and San Diego is the perfect region to test these ideas. We think it’s time to confront, head-on, the deficiencies in the traditional policymaking process at the local level and see how design methods and thinking can improve the process, the policies themselves, and the outcomes.

Because most of San Diego’s policymaking occurs downtown at the city, the county, and SANDAG (the regional planning agency), Bill will be setting up shop at UCSD’s Park & Market Building in Downtown San Diego, where he’ll be able to interact not just with people from UCSD but also from the Burnham Center for Community Advancement, the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, and many others who are deeply involved in the policymaking process in San Diego. Working with others at the Design Lab and UCSD and many others in the community, he will explore how we can use a design lens to tackle major issues in the region, especially the persistent and difficult issue of housing affordability.

So if you’ve got a policy problem – or you are frustrated that policy around something you care about isn’t being crafted well or isn’t leading to the desired outcomes – contact Bill to talk and see whether there’s a way to use design more intentionally to craft public policy in San Diego that really works.

– Mai Nguyen, Director

An Introduction to Bill Fulton, The Design Lab’s Visiting Policy Designer

How might we help San Diego leverage policy and design to impact the common good.

Policy and design are two important societal decision-making drivers that usually don’t go together. But together they can be very powerful – and The Design Lab hopes to combine the two in ways that will help move the important issues in the San Diego region forward.

Public policy is the art of crafting a course of action that government agencies can take in order to achieve a desired outcome – reducing homelessness, for example, or increasing the use of public transit in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The policy is usually crafted without those it affects – in a think tank, for example, or by legislative analysts in Sacramento, or thrown together in the political hothouse of a City-County or County Board of Supervisors meeting. The first can be too theoretical, not reflective of real-world experience, and too often driven by the ideological perspective of the think tank or the legislative committee. The second is usually the result of bargaining among politicians, meaning there’s not much focus on intentionality.

By introducing a design mindset into the policy process, policymakers can begin to overcome both of these limitations. They can get down and dirty in the real world to get more real-time feedback from what design calls “users” – perhaps not the right term, since individuals don’t always “use” policy even though it affects them. And together, we can bring more intentionality to the process of policymaking by creating a thoughtful feedback loop that elected officials will have a hard time ignoring – because users of policy are, after all, constituents as well.

On May 1, 2023, The Design Lab will add Bill Fulton to its staff as Visiting Policy Designer. Bill is an experienced urban planner and former elected official who has held leadership positions in the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors, including as Mayor of Ventura and Planning Director for the City of San Diego. He began to think deeply about how policy is designed – and how it could be designed better – when he stepped away from these intense public roles and entered academia full-time as Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston.

Bill thought a lot about how public policy, especially at the local level, so often seems to fall short and doesn’t really achieve its intended outcome. This is especially true in the world of land use and housing, which he has both operated on and studied (often in collaboration with me) for many years. In his recent book, “Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate”, Bill notes that sometimes, people in positions of influence want to adopt a policy in order to look good (or because they have to), but they don’t really want the outcome because it’s politically inconvenient.

Place and Prosperity by William Fulton | An Island Press book

All of this is why the Design Lab is the perfect place for Bill to try to improve the policy design process – and San Diego is the perfect region to test these ideas. We think it’s time to confront, head-on, the deficiencies in the traditional policymaking process at the local level and see how design methods and thinking can improve the process, the policies themselves, and the outcomes.

Because most of San Diego’s policymaking occurs downtown at the city, the county, and SANDAG (the regional planning agency), Bill will be setting up shop at UCSD’s Park & Market Building in Downtown San Diego, where he’ll be able to interact not just with people from UCSD but also from the Burnham Center for Community Advancement, the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, and many others who are deeply involved in the policymaking process in San Diego. Working with others at the Design Lab and UCSD and many others in the community, he will explore how we can use a design lens to tackle major issues in the region, especially the persistent and difficult issue of housing affordability.

So if you’ve got a policy problem – or you are frustrated that policy around something you care about isn’t being crafted well or isn’t leading to the desired outcomes – contact Bill to talk and see whether there’s a way to use design more intentionally to craft public policy in San Diego that really works.

– Mai Nguyen, Director

Read Next

Design Lab Ucsd Design At Business Summit Amsterdam

Exploring Design at Business in Amsterdam

Design Lab Associate Director Michèle Morris, and members Nanna Inie, and Jennifer Taylor recently attended…

Mai Nguyen

Meet Mai Nguyen, UC San Diego New Director of the Design Lab

Mai Nguyen began her role as Director of The Design Lab in March of this year, but she will be making the move from her long-time home of Chapel Hill, North Carolina to San Diego this summer. Her excitement beams because, having grown up in Orange and Riverside counties, she considers herself a native Californian. “For me, this is coming home to a place that I’m very familiar with; a place that I saw grow and develop and become what it is today.” It is precisely witnessing the development of these regions over time that inspired her to pursue her graduate studies in sociology and urban planning . “I watched the Southern California landscape get dotted by more and more development and traffic--where sprawl met the wall. I also saw the lack of foresight and  planning—our policies, our practices, our design of space really created so many other problems because we didn’t think about the long-term consequences of our growth and development. So I come back to The Design Lab with that background.”

Interdisciplinary Powerhouse: Pinar Yoldas is a Perfect Fit for the Design Lab

Pinar Yoldas describes herself as an interdisciplinary designer, artist and researcher whose current research revolves around speculative biology, in which she designs and creates what could possibly be the next steps of evolution regarding human tissues, organs, and bodies. Evolution, in the eyes of Yoldas, includes the potential for humans in the future to possess modular bodies in which humans can interchange or add on additional sexual organs. 

She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego and a member of The Design Lab. While she earned her PhD in Visual and Media Design from Duke University, her interests and credentials don’t stop there. Yoldas also holds a MFA in Game and Interactive Media Design from UC Los Angeles; a MA in Visual Arts from Bilgi University; a MS in Information Technologies from Istanbul Technical University; and a Bachelors of Architecture with a minor is Sociology from Middle East Technical University. Combining her passions for science, art, and undoubtedly, education, Yoldas has impressively served as a bridge throughout her career between five different disciplines and serves as an inspiration for the pursuit and practical application of interdisciplinary science and art studies.
Report: Military Remains Economic Bright Spot In San Diego

Report: Military remains economic bright spot in San Diego

Design Lab member Michael Meyer discusses San Diego's defense economy during Covid with ABC 10 News San Diego.

The coronavirus pandemic appears to have been no match for San Diego's defense economy, which a new report says keeps on growing.

The San Diego Military Advisory Council study says from the fiscal year 2020 to 2021, direct defense spending was $35.3 billion dollars, a 5.3 percent annual gain. Jobs grew 2 percent to nearly 349,112. In all, it made for a $55.2 billion dollar gross regional product.

"That means continued stability and economic prosperity for San Diego, buffered by, or provided by the military economy presence," said Michael Meyer, a professor at UC San Diego's Rady School of Management, which researched the report.

The study points out that military spending impacts more than the people employed by the federal government or serving on base or active duty. Instead, there's a multiplier effect in San Diego, with nearly 190,000 San Diegans employed by private companies contracting with the defense department -- such as in programming or shipbuilding.

"Retraining for electronics, computers, aviation, the engineering fields, the technical financial fields. That's all valuable and an effective way of getting into the military economy," Meyer said.
Design Lab Microsoft Adobe Workday Students

Design Lab Students Team with Microsoft, Adobe & Workday for Summer Projects

Steven Rick, Ailie Fraser, and Elmer Barerra are graduate and undergraduate students of the Design…

Design Education Don Norman

The Future of Design Education

Don Norman, Design Lab Director, reports on "The Future of Design Education"

Many of you know that for a long time I have been partnering with IBM Design and The World Design Organization to rethink the curriculum for design.  This is a progress report.

The History

It all started in March 2014 when Scott Klemmer and I wrote a paper called "State of Design: How Design Education Must Change" published in LinkedIn. (Why LinkedIn? Because of the wide, diverse readership: This paper has been read by 50,167 people, with 93 comments.) https://bit.ly/31Qqv1W

Design Lab

When Scott, Jim Hollan, and I started the Design Lab, we knew what we did NOT wish to do: build a traditional design education. Our training was rich and varied, and we wanted our students to have a similarly broad education. We wanted to do things that made a real difference in the world. After all, our origin was from Cognitive Science and computers -- Human Behavior and Technology, Design is an applied field that requires multi-disciplinary approaches to important, difficult issues.
Back To Top