Policies are how a government affects the lives of its citizens. Cat Drew works in Policy Lab, a small unit in the British Cabinet Office that uses pioneering approaches from both the arts and the sciences to improve people’s experience of public services. She explains how data and design together are greater than the sum of their parts: that while data can tell you what is happening, design can tell you why things are happening, and that while data can speed up and transform services, design is needed to make them fit into our human world.

Cat is a hybrid policymaker and designer, with over 10 years experience of working in government, including Cabinet Office and No.10, plus a post-graduate education in design. This allows her to seeking out innovative, new practice – for example speculative design and data visualisation – and experiment with how this could work in Government to improve policymaking. Her interests lie at the intersection of data and design and how these methods work together. @catdrew19 This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx