The twin faces of public sector design

Design thinking has become a popular approach for governments around the world seeking to address complex governance challenges. It offers novel techniques and speaks to broader questions of who governs, how they govern, and the limits of rational instrumentalism in policy making. Juxtaposing design thinking with an older tradition of policy design, this article offers the first critical analysis of the application of design thinking to policy making. It argues that design thinking does not sufficiently account for the political and organizational contexts of policy work. Design thinking also errs in universally privileging one particular policy style over others, and fails to account for the reality of policy mixes. Despite these deficiencies, it is argued that design thinking can inform and enrich governance by helping policy designers produce more adaptable designs, better appreciate the behavioral dynamics of public sector design, and leverage networked approaches to social problem solving.     

A simple method of nose tip shape validation for facial approximation

Despite numerous papers relating to the prediction of nose projection for the purposes of facial approximation, there is little guidance for nose tip shape that has been evaluated on a known data set. This study presents a novel, simple technique for validation of the reconstructed nose tip shape based on methods used in actual approximation practice. The data set was comprised of 25 full-head computed tomography (CT) patient scans. In 22 of the 25 patients across all age and sex groups, when the head is tilted so that soft tissue pronasale is superimposed on hard tissue rhinion, the curvature of the nose tip was found to mimic the curvature of the superior portion of the nasal aperture. This occurs when the head is tilted dorsally by approximately 60° (55.87±5.91). Individuals with snub noses presented a much wider tip curvature. The method was highly repeatable and was evaluated through inter- and intra-observer studies (error=3.15%).