ESSENTIAL TERMS
Co-design
-An approach to designing with, not for, people
-Involves sharing power, prioritising relationships, using participatory means and building capability
-A co-designer is someone who is part of a co-design team throughout the co-design process. I use ‘team’ (instead of ‘group’) deliberately to encourage mutual accountability. A co-design team is made up of people with lived experience, professionals and provocateurs.
-Co-design ‘initiative’ is used deliberately in place of ‘project’ to stress that co-design is not merely a project, but a long-term commitment to changing organisational culture and sharing power.
Convener: A person who leads co-design gathering
Mindset: A way of being and thinking. Mindsets are about who we are and how we are while doing co-design. In this book, I name six mindsets for co-design and refer to them throughout.
Outcomes: An outcome is what changes in someone’s life as a result of our actions. People decide their desired outcomes; we don’t decide for them. An outcome is different from an output, which is a ‘thing’ (e.g. a service) that often measures busyness instead of value.
Person with lived experience: This refers to someone who has been impacted by one or more social justice issues – for example, domestic violence, homelessness, child abuse or neglect. By contrast, I use ‘professional’ as a catch-all term for someone working in or on a system.
Power: Power means having the ability to bring about change in your life or the lives of others.
Provocateurs: Provocateurs are part of the co-design team and outsiders to your context. They deliberately do not have professional expertise and do not need lived experience either. They bring their curiosity. They do not bring assumptions or constraints.
PART 1: FOUNDATIONS FOR CO-DESIGN
DEFINITION AND PRINCIPLES OF CO-DESIGN
-Overall, the primary role of co-design is elevating the voices and contributions of people with lived experience. Beyond writing on sticky notes, co-design is about how we are being (our mindsets), what we are doing (our methods) and how our systems embrace the participation of people with lived experience (social movements)
4 key principles for co-design
1. Share power
2. Prioritise relationships
3. Use participatory means
4. Build capability
Process for co-design
1. Build the conditions for the genuine and safe involvement of people with lived experience
2. Immerse and align
3. Discover
4. Design
5. Test and refine
6. Implement and learn
-There is no co-designing without co-deciding
Transformational co-design
-Transactional co-design (OLD): To produce outputs (e.g. products) vs. Transformational co-design (NEW): To produce outputs and social outcomes
-It’s not co-design if there’s only ever a hom*ogenous group of people (e.g. teachers without students) - that’s a workshop or an interagency meeting
Social movements for co-design
-Enable people with lived experience to be a part of your decision-making, don’t add more advisory groups that keep people separate
POWER, PRIVILEGE AND EQUITY
Recognising power differentials in co-design
-Co-design isn’t smooth sailing - conflict and confrontation will happen
-In co-design, conveners prioritise the safety of marginalised people over the comfort of privileged people
-People with less power shouldn’t have to make themselves heard; people with more power must create more safety, generosity and hospitality
-If your organisation has a history of selective listening, work extra hard to demonstrate your capacity to listen and learn, without adverse repercussions for people who speak up
Examining privilege
-If shaming people was effective, our systems would work perfectly
Increasing power literacy in design
-If we don’t know what the game is, designers can be an unwilling pawn
-No single discipline has the answers; we have to learn from each other
-Examining power (or how to clear a room) - Tony Benn, British parliamentarian, named 5 essential questions of democracy, which we can apply to ourselves and to co-design:
1. What power have you got?
2. Where did you get it from?
3. In whose interests do you exercise it?
4. To whom are you accountable?
5. How can we get rid of you?
Exercising power in partnership
-In co-design, designers must shift their role from expert to coach
Coaching others to learn new mindsets and skills
1. Asking better questions, listening
2. Collecting, analysing and synthesising insights
3. Seeing relationships and connections to improve systems
4. Working with difference and building partnerships
5. Leading and influencing change
Enabling people to contribute in different ways
-Conversations need not follow a straight line; they can be messy and meandering and have immense value
Considerations for non-Indigenous practitioners
-If invited to do so, support people’s aspirations as they would define them
-6 principles for non-Indigenous practitioners to bear in mind if they are invited to work with (and only if they are invited to work with) Indigenous people and practitioners. It won’t capture everything and doesn’t try. Instead, it includes a few places to start from my experience and failings to work in culturally affirming ways (which I’m learning too):
1. Build on existing strengths
2. Avoid one-size-fits-all approaches
3. Work at Indigenous people’s pace and on their terms
4. Practice generous listening without minimisation or comparison
5. Get to know the history and current priorities of a group of people
6. Learn and use the correct pronounciation of places, words and names
MYTH BUSTING
’Co-design is too expensive’
-Focus on future savings, not current costs
’Co-design throws out professional expertise’
-Focus on gains, for example, professional development
’Co-design ignores evidence’
’We have to involve everyone’
-When we improve the poorest outcomes, the benefits tend to flow to everyone
’Co-design is about new ideas’
-Find what works, can be joined up and what can be adapted from elsewhere
’Co-design is about drawing on sticky notes’
-Put down the sticky notes and build your toolbox of participatory approaches
’Co-design is about ideas, not implementation’
’We have to have complete representation’
-Invite people to speak about their experience, not to represent anyone else’s
’Co-design dumbs down work’
PART 2: 6 MINDSETS FOR CO-DESIGN
ABOUT THE MINDSETS
-Before doing co-design, practise being co-design
-Build the mindsets into your team and organisational structures
1. ELEVATING LIVED EXPERIENCE
-Design tools and moving stories are not stand-ins for real people
-People with lived experience have lives, dreams and skills beyond interactions with services
Practices for elevating lived experience
Offer generous listening
-Listen to how people feel
-Listen to believe people with lived experience
-Listen to what matters to other people
-Listen without minimisation
Provide meaningful opportunities
-While we should never expose people to unnecessary risk and poor process, we must enable people to choose and get involved in the ways they think are right for them
-Traps to beware of:
1. Assuming that people can speak on behalf of others
2. Assuming carers can speak on behalf of the people they care for
3. Assuming peer workers speak for all people with lived experience
4. Assuming that listening to people with lived experience is done
5. Assuming that good feedback is enough
2. BEING IN THE GREY
-There is no map; we make it together
-However miserable it sounds, being in the grey is central to co-design, learning, innovation and systems change
-No single tool or method can ‘manage’ complexity away
-You will be uncomfortable; it’s unavoidable
-Being in the grey is a temporary state in co-design
Practices for being in the grey
Resist quick fixes
-Travel through complexity to get to simplicity
Use speculative tools
Manage yourself
3. VALUING MANY PERSPECTIVES
Practices for valuing many perspectives
Maintain a systems perspective
-A lack of multidimensional insight is similar to looking through a small window into one room, instead of at the whole house
-This isn’t about shrugging off individual responsibility. Instead, it involves recognising that behaviour is more complicated than personal choice alone
-‘They’ language distances us from one another, and with distance diminishes curiosity and opportunity
Uncover values and mindsets
-When we get stuck in a shame or defensiveness spiral, we stop listening and learning
Seek multicultural, not monoclultural views
-Co-design must hold space for different worldviews, not blend everything into a dominant culture
Help people in a system to act
4. CURIOSITY
Practices for curiosity
Use humility
Ask quality questions
-When we feel most rushed is when we most need to slow down, listen, feel and observe
Build supportive structures
5. HOSPITALITY
-Co-design moves at the speed of connections, no faster
Practices for hospitality
Address the dimensions of hospitality
-4 dimensions to lessen anxiety and increase connection:
1. You are appreciated
2. You are supported
3. You are welcome here
4. Come as you are
Shift away from school
-Give people explicit permission to look after themselves, by, for example, moving around the room, taking breaks, drawing or knitting. Many of us are still stuck in a punitive power dynamic with a teacher from school
Consider culture and context
6. LEARNING THROUGH DOING
-We don’t know what works without trying things out, learning and iterating as a result
Practices for learning through doing
Explore new ways to work
-Prototyping isn’t just about what we test, but also what we learn through the process, and the capacity we develop
-We build prototypes to ensure our early efforts can easily be discarded if they don’t work
Learn to recover from failure
-Without the right conditions, there’s no post-traumatic growth after failure
Set personal preferences aside
-Our blind spots are the biggest when looking at our own ideas
PART 3: METHODS FOR CO-DESIGN
PHASE 1: BUILD THE CONDITIONS
-If you get stuck on which tools to use, return to the key principles for co-design
Introducing the co-design team
-Recruit more people with lived experience than professionals to support power-sharing
-Resist the temptation to replace small circles with big groups, shallow consultation and one-off events
-Co-design teams tend to work best with three parts:
1. People with lived experience
Criteria for selection:
-People who have firsthand experience
-People who can represent their experience, not others’
-People who are interested in being part of a team, sharing their thoughts and learning
2. Provocateurs
Provocation is different from agitation. -Provocateurs don’t upset others or derail the process
Criteria for selection:
-People who are outside the context you are working in
-People who are committed to curiosity and compassion
-People who don’t come with a solution in mind
-People who can challenge professionals (even those professionals who have lots of power)
-People who are critical and creative thinkers
-People who can expose the gaps in what people say, do and believe
-In our current systems, while someone with lived experience might not feel they can challenge professionals, provocateurs can and do
-Consider creating a list of tried and helpful provocateurs to draw on across co-design initiatives
-Share a provocateur role description with potential recruits for the role
3. Professionals working with or for people with lived experience
-Being part of a team can’t be for everyone. Offer a range of opportunities for people to contribute beyond groups
-Professionals must come from different perspectives, backgrounds and identities. Resist hom*ogeneity
Criteria for selection:
-People who are willing to listen, share and learn
-People who are respectful of lived experience
-People who are focused on increasing dignity and choice
-People who can listen without fact-checking
-People who are diverse in their perspectives and identity
-People who can add legitimacy to a co-design process
-People who are sensitive to inequities
-People who are self-aware and have interpersonal flexibility
-People who are willing to be uncomfortable
-People who are frustrated with the status quo
-Don’t be afraid to swap sponsors out for someone more available and eager
-Without decision-makers in your co-design team, you risk developing interesting ideas that can’t be implemented
-If academics can’t make room for learning, don’t make room for them.
Introducing people outside the co-design team
-People with lived experience and professionals
-Influencers
-Bridge builders
-Testers
-Public relations
-Artists
-Advisers
-Critical friends
Getting to know the Model of Care for Co-design
-Stepped care model for mental health: Well population —> Mild illness —> Severe and complex illness
-We can’t figure out how to create safety as we go along. We need to figure it out before we start
-Don’t just tell people somewhere is safe. Also show it through your words and actions
Model of Care for Co-design
Overview:
Before bringing the co-design team together:
-Assess the fit
-Establish a support team
-Build relationships
-Offer genuine invitations
-Widen inclusion
Keeping the team together:
-Connect co-designers
-Seek ongoing feedback
-Have courageous conversations
-Seek ongoing relationships
-Care for each other
Working safely within your support team and with co-designers: Develop frameworks for safety, e.g. frameworks for serious disclosure, safe disclosure, a duty of care, the rights and responsibilities of co-designers, frameworks for recognition, attribution and payment
-Ask people in advance what safe would look and feel like, should it be true
1. Assess the fit
-Are you the right person for the work? Is it needed?
2. Establish a support team
-As a member of the support team, an initiative isn’t ‘yours’ – the co-design team own it and the people who will be most impacted by the change
-Listen to the community connector’s advice. If they tell you now isn’t the time for co-design, listen
3. Build relationships
-Who are you working with?
-If you don’t have time to build relationships, you don’t have time for co-design
-Partner with, don’t parent co-designers
-If you move too fast, mistrust can lead to the ‘real’ conversation happening outside the room, rather than in it. Slow down to prioritise relationships
4. Offer genuine invitation
-What’s in it for others? Genuine invitations are personal, trusted and sensitive
-Provide a personal touch
-Provide choice
-See and build on strengths - Focus on what people can contribute. Look beyond the usual suspects and in unusual places
-Pre-empt barriers - Barriers to participation are things that make it difficult for people to take part in something wholly. Consider an independent convener for sensitive co-design work
5. Widen inclusion
-Who can take part?
-Design and co-design are not inherently inclusive; we have to make them so. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to reliably including everyone, every time
-10 principles for widening inclusion:
1. Remove barriers
2. Slow down
3. Go beyond writing
4. Support power-sharing
5. Practise flexibility
6. Seek consent
7. Use affirming language - If in doubt, connect with your advisers and ask questions with sensitivity and curiosity
8. Be mindful of sensory differences
9. Ensure safe venues
10. Seek intersectionality
-Recruit wisely - To feel safe in a group, it helps to see people like us
6. Connect co-designers
-Who are you as people? Why are you together?
-Avoid performance - Share lived experience in small circles, without fancy. Wherever possible, enable people to write their own stories. If you write someone else’s story, would you be happy for them to read it? How would they feel reading it?
-Define and maintain boundaries - Communicate boundaries within a clearly documented ‘code of care’. People cannot pop in and out of co-design or miss opening rituals.
7. Have courageous conversations
-Are you enabling people to take off their armour?
-If conveners don’t speak up when someone is harmed, we are complicit in what’s happening
-Conveners of co-design prioritise the safety of marginalised people above the comfort of privileged people. They encourage positive behaviour from everyone and afford no privilege to people with letters around their names (e.g. Dr).
-If we say somewhere is or will be safe, and then we do not address harmful actions, we have failed
8. Seek ongoing feedback
-How are people feeling?
-Set up a feedback approach for co-designers
9. Care for each other
-How are you sustaining yourself? Others?
-We care for others through meeting our own needs too
-We must do co-design in close-knit teams
-We need to schedule and maintain time
-We must be careful not to do too many co-design initiatives at one time
-Offer ongoing support
Develop frameworks for safety
-It’s not enough to just have frameworks; also know how to apply them, and what to do when things don’t go to plan
a. Serious disclosure
-A serious disclosure is when someone shares that they are being harmed, harming themselves or likely to harm others. When that happens, we must respond compassionately, quickly and effectively. How we respond has an impact on the person’s ability to seek further help and recover from the trauma related to the disclosure.
-Without shared practice, we’re less likely to respond to someone at risk appropriately
b. Safe disclosure
-Safe disclosure is about supporting people in groups to share their stories safely, in a way that minimises potential harm to others
-If we don’t define the edges of a conversation, anything goes
c. Duty of care
