The BreakFast Sessions: Co-design - Principles & practice
We're big believers in co-design at CreateFuture. We look to bring the customer or the user, into every project we do, in some way or another. Sometimes that's through research, other times it's through testing, but ideally it's through the user's active participation in the design process, and in particular the co-creation of ideas and potential solutions.
I recently interviewed Adrian Hickey (Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media in the School of Communication and Media at Ulster University) and Dave Ward (CreateFuture's Creative Partner) about the pros and cons, principles and practices of co-design.
CreateFuture recently facilitated a Design Sprint with Adrian in which young people from Northern Island were invited to reimagine the countries census experience. In doing so, they co-created an entirely new way for young people to engage with government.
There's also a great website going into the project and process in more detail here: www.ourcensus.co.uk
It was a fascinating chat, covering the academic and the pragmatic - here are 5 key take outs from the discussion:
1 . Strive to include the excluded
One the key benefits of co-design is that, done properly, you'll get better, more diverse solutions. You'll only get this benefit though if you involve a diverse set of users and backgrounds. Often, the greatest beneficiaries of design may be those that are typically under-represented, marginalised or excluded. In the case of the Rise project, young people felt distanced and excluded from modern politics, so it was a challenge to get them excited about being involved in designing a solution.
Co-design means that we [as Designers] aren't advocating for certain members of society. Instead we have them with us. They are advocating for themselves, and that empowers them, and it empowers the design. You get better design for more diverse people - Adrian.
Go beyond your core customer base. Strive for a diverse co-creation team, and consider how you need to communicate and incentivise them to want to be involved.
2 . Customers are not designers
"I can't design" or "I'm not creative": we hear this in every design sprint we facilitate. It's vitally important to support your users through the process. Over-communicate the process they'll be taken through, explain the Why and not just the What and How to each step, avoid design jargon, give them the right information they need to take part, and think about what constraints are essential to have in place, and which can be removed from the brief.
The GV Design sprint is designed to be accessible and democratic. so even if you don't have time to take your users through a full one-week programme, you can refer to it for exercises in problem exploration or ideation.
Co-design is exactly that through - co-designing, not expecting the customer to design for you. It needs to be a constant dialogue between Designers and customers, supporting and developing on their ideas and input through the process.
Don't expect the answer to your problem on a plate at the end of the process, but do expect to have been served up a wider range of viable potential solutions as a result of customer's involvement.
Just because your customer has helped you design it, do not expect it to be right - Dave
3 . Co-Design early
Co-Design works best early in the design process, when you're still looking to develop an empathetic understanding of your customer and their context of use.
Co-ideation early can also be really helpful in helping to 'kill your darlings'. You can gauge reaction to potential solutions that you thought might be promising, but your customers have no interest in. In the case of designing for people outside your your age bracket and interest group, your users will "immediately sense" if something is inauthentic or inappropriate.
If you can bring your community into the design process as early as possible, it will begin to change the mindset of your organisation about the problems that you’re trying to solve and the people that you’re trying to solve them for, and that will have a longer lasting effect - Dave
But if you design early, removing a lot of the actual constraints that you (as a project owner) know exist, can free up your co-designers to go wider with their ideas:
In co-design, it's more exploratory. We're looking to understand context of use, and to better inform an eventual design brief, rather than to get a buildable solution out of it. That comes later - Dave
4 . Co-Design often
If you're not involving customers in your design in any way currently (and that's probably still the norm, rather than the exception, so don't be hard on yourself), it's OK to start small. While maybe not technically co-design, start with research and feedback.
When we worked with Greyhound [buses] we were designing in a room above a depot. So whenever we needed input, say on the website information architecture, we’d just go down with bits of card and ask customers waiting for their bus to help us sort them. Co-design with zero cost - Dave
Think about co-design across the entire design process. Most organisations are comfortable bringing customers into the research phase or the testing phase, so if you’re getting started, it’s about moving from the edges in - Dave
You'll quickly see the benefits, and if there's any reticence, be able to win your colleagues over to the value of getting closer to your customers.
In time it will become easier and less scary recruiting and facilitating customers to co-design with you and give you feedback on process. Over time you may find you've built up a live, diverse panel of customers that you can quickly call on when needed.
5 . Check your biases
What we’re trying to do is work with people with different biases and different viewpoints and still come out with some way to move forward - Adrian
Everyone is different, and everyone will have a view of what the right solution is (including you, as the facilitator, sponsor or other side of the co-designing team). Rather than ignore these biases, it’s important to surface, understand and design for them.
There’s clearly the risk of conflict - different members of the team will want to see ‘their’ solutions progress, but the design sprint , if facilitated well, is really good at democratising the design process, and often what seem like competing ideas can in fact be recombined into something greater than the sum of their parts.
Through our BreakFast sessions, we talk to leaders in the Design and Innovation industry. The talks are filmed live. We talk about their industry and business, we learn from their experience and create an open forum for questions and new ideas. Visit createfuture.com to sign up for the next session and to watch recordings of the previous talks.