Co-Design: A Catalyst for Change?

The world is changing more quickly than ever before, making it vital for designers to be at the forefront of this change, ensuring decisions aren’t being made by only those with power. Co-Design enables problems to be framed and solutions to be created working in tandem with end-users and communities, an approach that is crucial when addressing ‘wicked problems’ - based around social or cultural issues, ones that 21st century businesses need to be very aware of going forward and not just government or 3rd sector. During the part-time MSc in Design for Business that I am currently studying (never thought I would be a student again!) , I recently had the enlightening opportunity to interview Dr Cara Broadley Design Research Fellow at GSA about all things co-design - what it means to her, how she has used it in her career and where it will be in 10 years.

What does co-design mean to you?

“I see co-design as a key stage in a broader practice of participatory design where communities come together to help identify challenges and opportunities within problem areas. Co-design therefore builds on traditional?prototyping where the use of visual materials and methods are crucial. It facilitates mutual learning – reciprocity, basically what they will gain from being involved in a project. “

How does it relate to design thinking?

“I don’t usually refer to the term design thinking but know there are crossovers as it distributes design capabilities to people without formal design training. I think design thinking however is very user centric and my work is more community focussed, tackling complex social problems. Supporting people to be creative is hard: brainstorming/blue sky thinking is tough for people at the coalface of social problems – people just want to tackle the matter in hand. Co-design is less about a toolkit – it is more fluid – more akin to adapting to different contexts. These are my own working definitions, it is important for designers to stand by their own way of working.”

What is your approach, any top tips?

“I don’t have a specific approach – my values are informed by my background in ceramics and drawing – using visuals and artefacts to help people express themselves. I like to scope a project before starting and don’t rush in. I also like to focus on people’s strengths and qualities rather than the problems, taking perhaps a more appreciative approach. The process isn’t ignoring the problems, as long as questions are framed with care, we can make positive progress.”

Do you think the language of design (e.g., the Double Diamond) can be detrimental to the success of the co-design process?

“I cited the Double Diamond framework in my PhD as it helps to map out the different phases of a design-led process. I think it is over-criticised, it is useful in certain situations to initiate people into this type of convergent and divergent thinking. I do like to use some design terms with participants but break them down and adapt existing tools that are available. The key is to provide examples that participants can relate to, and for the terms you use to be contextualised to the situation – they don’t need to learn the design specific terms.”

Can you reflect on a key co-design project you have been involved with?

“One that comes to mind is Leapfrog at Lancaster – a very interesting and co-design centric approach, working with organisations who were experiencing challenges engaging with communities. The outputs for the organisations were specific tools to help get over these barriers specifically with participation. The project findings were shared internationally to see how other communities could adapt this learning and demonstrate the wider impact of a co-design approach. GSA’s core role in the project was to evaluate the difference that co-design made to these community organisations.”

“Similarly, the project did face challenges. For example, we were working in Mull but living in Glasgow, and a lot of time and resource was required to spend a significant period working on location. We visited the island a few times to work with communities and generate concepts for engagement tools, and then refined the prototypes back in Glasgow. It seemed like the most practical way of working but it was a challenge to really instil the communities' ownership over the outcomes when our collaboration was disrupted by time and space. We recognised this and developed ways to work around this – using remote tools and asynchronous design. Ultimately this approach made our transition to remote working via the pandemic much easier!”

Where will co-design be in the next 10 years?

“I believe co-design is now in the public consciousness and vernacular. People have latched onto it and there is a danger that co-design becomes more tokenistic, more like consultation and moving away from giving people ownership to drive change. Evidencing the value of co-design is crucial, it is less about how much money etc, more about culture change and long-term capability changes.”

“I believe co-design within an academic research setting leads itself to be able to do this more effectively, but ultimately we need to prove the impact of co-design not just on outputs but also on the change of mindsets. Co-design is going through an evolution, becoming less related to business issues and instead social justice and the decolonisation of design. We need to be weary of thinking that co-design will provide the ideal solution all the time, needs to be appropriate and breakdown power imbalances, ensuring all voices are heard. Co-design has the power to allow people to have better conversations.”

“In ten years, I believe it will be seen less as a repertoire/set of methods for any situation but more as a mindset – like the ‘Beyond Stickies’ book written by Kelly Ann McKercher. This mindset needs to be distributed to all types of organisations so that each sector can deliver codesign ethically, and effectively – especially around policy making.”

Finally, who are best to run a co-design process, designers (from a traditional sense) or non-designers?

“Good question! I know lots of designers who don’t have a co-design mindset – they just want to focus on their specific discipline (graphic design etc). Seeing the value of co-design to make change however is really important. Non-designers are perhaps not able to visualise and prototype ideas as effectively but if they are able to build relationships/empathy, navigate different situations, reading a room and balance pragmatic and ethical implications of co-design, then the importance of these skills aren’t to be taken lightly. It is vital that a co-design team has a diverse set of skills.”

“If I had choose I believe it would be harder to change the mindset of traditional designers to think this way, but at the same time it is vital to have people within the process that have strong core design skills especially when ideas are beginning to be developed.“

A huge thankyou to Cara for her time and insight into such an important area of design understanding and process which I am sure will be invaluable to design innovators around the world, in particular those who are in the midst of tackling highly-complex societal and cultural problems.

My personal takeaways from the interview were:

1. the further re-enforcement of how important it is for design innovators to establish and continue to learn and iterate in regards to their way of working and the tools and frameworks they use
2. the way in which co-design has been a key driver in the move from design thinking being a process solely used to address key strategic business issues to now being expanded to the tackling of wicked problems.

I would love to hear other people's thoughts and experiences on how design based approaches can/have be utilised to make genuine change in this volatile world we are all experiencing right now.