Co-design

Co-design brings citizens and stakeholders together to design new products, services and policies.

Method

Co-design brings citizens and stakeholders together to design new products, services and policies.

Purpose

  • To explore both problems and solutions collaboratively.
  • To connect stakeholders with citizen groups in a meaningful way.
  • To design solutions that are grounded in both community need and government constraints.
  • To open up the project's goals and outcomes to citizen input.

What you get

  • A fit for purpose program, policy or service.

Strengths

  • Great at building confidence, consensus, ownership, leadership and accountability within a stakeholder group.
  • Great at producing “community-led” products, services or policies.

Weaknesses

  • Co-design can rely on the availability of people with different schedules. Projects need to build in ample time for collaboration.
  • Participatory mindsets can be difficult to foster in groups of experts.
  • Co-design will fail if inclusion strategies are not adopted. Getting the right people together, under the right conditions, is vital to its success.
  • It can be difficult to build consensus within large groups, especially if experts dominate the process.

Key terminology

Expert mindset: Where decisions are based on the prior knowledge and experience of experts.

Participatory mindset: Where decisions are based on consensus of the group.

Inclusion: Adapting project activities so that communities or citizens can be involved.

Tips

Co-design relied upon experienced facilitators and co-design leaders to guide participants through the design process successfully.

Designers should consider and create the conditions that allow safe, respectful and productive collaboration.

Toolkits and resources

Updated