Policy design approaches currently pay insufficient attention to feedback that occurs during the design process. Addressing this endogenous policy design feedback gap is pressing as policymakers can adopt ‘low-fidelity’ design approaches featuring compressed and iterative feedback-rich design cycles. We argue that within-design feedback can be oriented to the components of policy designs (instruments and objectives) and serve to reinforce or undermine them during the design process. We develop four types of low-fidelity design contingent upon the quality of feedback available to designers and their ability to integrate it into policy design processes: confident iteration and stress testing, advocacy and hacking, tinkering and shots in the dark, or coping. We illustrate the utility of the approach and variation in the types, use, and impacts of within-design feedback and low-fidelity policy design through an examination of the UK’s Universal Credit policy.

目前政策设计方法对设计过程中出现的反馈关注不够。解决这种内生的政策设计反馈差距迫在眉睫，因为政策制定者可以采用具有压缩和迭代反馈丰富设计周期的“低保真”设计方法。我们认为，设计内反馈可以针对政策设计的组成部分（工具和目标），并在设计过程中加强或削弱它们。我们开发了四种类型的低保真设计，具体取决于设计师可获得的反馈的质量以及他们将其整合到政策设计流程中的能力：自信的迭代和压力测试、倡导和黑客攻击、修补和黑暗中的射击或应对。我们通过对英国通用信贷政策的审查，说明了该方法的实用性以及设计内反馈和低保真度政策设计的类型、用途和影响的变化。