A sample of how the Lab documents its design work - an overview of each of the six Development Tracks: their purpose and scope, the prototype each one builds, its priority pilot, and optional extensions.
This is a detailed overview of each Development Track's purpose, scope, and design questions, alongside the prototype each track builds - its steps, clarifying questions, pilot activities, and optional extensions.
The SIF is the backbone of the Lab's outputs - the methodology that gives the model its logic and structure, and the standard against which design decisions are tested.
Each track develops and tests a different dimension of the SIF, and the findings from all six are synthesised into an evolving SIF design throughout Stage 2, coordinated by FFT with key experts across the tracks.
Synthesis runs alongside track work throughout Stage 2 - each track's documentation includes a cross-track overlay table so connections, dependencies and decisions are tracked as work progresses.
Monthly Lab meetings play back developments across all tracks and surface synergies and overlaps. All materials live in the Lab Knowledge Hub.
Select a track to see its purpose, the questions it must answer, how its prototype is built, and what it produces.
Defines how the National Conversation connects to government and policy processes while maintaining independence and public trust. It identifies the desired endpoint and multiple strategic entry points for engagement, so civic input can translate into a credible institutional response. This track carries the highest strategic risk: without clarity on the intended policy tool, public engagement risks becoming symbolic rather than consequential.
Run a simulated government engagement sequence with partners role-playing actors across two political traditions, testing sequencing and sign-off rules. Debrief with the Governance Council - does the Protocol hold under realistic pressure?
Ensures the process is rigorous, transparent and ethically sound. It governs how insights are gathered, analysed and translated - balancing qualitative depth with quantitative rigour, and ensuring transparency, consent, privacy and data sovereignty are upheld. This track makes the Lab outputs defensible to participants, communities and policymakers alike.
Academic partnership - a formal MOU with one or two universities for peer review of the research architecture and instruments, and to co-publish findings. Strengthens credibility significantly.
Run the architecture on a single bounded topic across Levels 1 and 2 with a small volunteer group. Test whether synthesis produces coherent, non-contradictory outputs - and whether Level 2 deliberative depth is preserved rather than flattened by Level 1 survey data.
Ensures engagement is grounded in place, relationships and lived experience. Rather than imposing a uniform model, it enables communities to engage on their own terms through trusted local organisations, leaders and networks - focusing on how local conversations are convened and adapted, while still contributing meaningfully to a shared national process.
Run the three Community Synthesis Reports through the Track 2 synthesis protocol with a researcher present, documenting every point where local specificity is lost or distorted. This tests one of the Lab's most important design claims - that synthesis can hold community voice at national scale.
Designs the digital and offline infrastructure that enables accessible, trustworthy and scalable participation. It focuses on user experience, feedback loops and coordination systems that support inclusion without unnecessary complexity. Distinct from research integrity, its work concentrates on how infrastructure supports participation, transparency and coordination at scale.
Deploy the participation experience in two contrasting contexts simultaneously - one high digital access, one low. Test whether the digital and offline pathways produce equivalent depth and quality of contribution. If not, the hybrid design needs rethinking before national rollout.
Addresses the barriers that prevent meaningful participation and ensures influence is fairly distributed - not only access. It tackles practical, cultural and systemic exclusions: time, digital access, language, disability, caring responsibilities, class divides and institutional distrust. The goal is not broad participation alone but equitable influence over how insights are interpreted and used.
Run one targeted pathway end-to-end with the relevant community. Measure whether it produces meaningfully higher genuine engagement than the standard model - including an influence audit: are this community's contributions reflected with appropriate weight in the synthesis?
Shapes how the National Conversation is communicated so it resonates widely, strengthens community cohesion and grounds the process in shared civic values. In a context of polarisation, it develops framing grounded in lived realities, embeds cultural safety, and creates space for respectful disagreement. It also governs Lab communications throughout Stage 2.
Test the framing architecture with groups from three genuinely different communities before locking it for national use - including at least one with high consultation fatigue and one CALD community. Measure which frames land, which trigger disengagement, and whether the anti-framing list needs expanding.