Is Co-design the Future of Design?
4 lessons we learned and how you can implement co-design into your projects
What does it mean to be a designer?
When I first started working as a design professional, I understood it was my job to come up with ideas, solutions, and answers. Clients, partners, collaborators would come to us because they had problems and they needed our expertise. However, in the past few years, as I tried to incorporate more user-centered design approaches into my design practice, I started to wonder more about my role as a designer.
During my short, non-dramatic soul searching, I joined a one-hour webinar by Don Norman on 21st Century Design. I found myself very intrigued by what he said: “Designers are the final piece of the puzzle”. The field of Human-Centered Design should deeply focus upon the needs and capabilities of the people who will be the recipients of the results. Community members are co-designers and design professionals are facilitators and mentors.
Norman believes this is a new future of design, one that involves collaborative work between people who do the design and people who will be affected by the design.
Luckily for me, I got to experience Norman’s idea of the new future of design first-hand, when I was given the opportunity to co-facilitate some co-design sessions for our first in-house product, Capy, together with our UX lead, Luke.
About Capy
Capy is a homework and mental health tracking app that helps parents and children prepare for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). It was born from our team members’ passion to find a solution to the problem of academic stress in young children in Singapore.
Capy’s targets busy working parents who lack time and resources to monitor their children’s studies regularly and their children who are sitting for PSLE in the next one or two years.
What is co-design?
Co-design, also known as co-creation, is a creative research method in which you convene a group of people you are designing for to bring them into the design process. At the heart of it, co-design is designing with users, not for them. It is not just about listening to your users, it is about empowering them to create alongside you.
Why co-design?
As a human-centered design studio, empathy is a big part of 55 Minutes.
When our team started exploring ideas for Capy, we recognized the bond and relationship between our user target groups—parent and child—would be the most important element to the product. Everyone in the team has been a child, but not everyone has had the experience of being a parent. As parenthood comes with its own unique set of needs, challenges, and responsibilities, it is very difficult for most of the team members, who are non-parents, to empathize with the users; this is why we decided to co-design with our users.
What did we learn from our co-design sessions?
After two 90-minute co-design sessions with two selected parents, here’s what we learned:
1. Co-design is useful in all design stages, not only in the ideation stage
With Capy, we ran our co-design sessions during the test-and-refine stage of the human-centered design process. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, we ran the sessions like how we would run a design critique, but online. The results that we got led to an iteration of our prototype. Not only did it help us gain a deeper understanding of parents as our users, but it also led to insights that generated new ideas for our next possible phase.
💡 Tip: When co-designers propose new features, take time to understand why they suggested them. Listen to what needs they are trying to solve and discuss if there are better ways to solve them. This way, the results of your co-design process can feed into most stages of the design thinking process, not just during the ideation phase.
2. Co-design helps you test features and get feedback, very quickly
Each session can be kept short yet effective! We managed to conduct rapid cycles of “test and redesign” for Capy, therefore reducing the time needed to move towards an MVP (minimal viable product). By eliminating unnecessary features, we reduced the cost needed to develop and build our product.
💡Tip 1: To get the most out of your co-design sessions, design a structure in which each co-designer is allowed time to evaluate or play with the prototype — they can give sharper feedback and suggestions without feeling rushed.
💡Tip 2: Before each session, send your co-designers the documents needed for the discussions. This can be short write-ups about the project or digital prototypes. It is important to prepare your co-designers beforehand by letting them think and reflect on the discussion materials.
3. Co-design lets you discover unique perspectives and new insights
We learned involving people from diverse backgrounds with different lived experiences is one of the most important keys to a successful co-design. A “one-size-fits-all” approach to co-design cannot serve the diverse needs of those who experience complex problems.
For Capy, we recruited two parents as co-designers. To ensure Capy as a product is as inclusive as can be, we selected participants from different genders (female and male), races and cultures (Chinese and Indian), and economic backgrounds.
💡 Tip: Create a safe space for your co-designers by making sure all their struggles and concerns are heard. It is important to validate their experience, thoughts, and feelings, especially when they’re the minority. By doing so, you might discover new perspectives and insights from people with different backgrounds.
4. Co-design brings an emphatic approach to design thinking
Empathy is an important step in design thinking because it is a skill that allows us to understand and share the same feelings that others feel. However, sometimes, the shoes just do not fit.
Co-designing with the parents has helped us learn how to abandon our ego — the assumption that we know what is best for them and their children. It also helps us practice humility — the willingness to admit our shortcomings when our ideas are criticized.
On top of that, we get to learn how to ask better questions, dig into unexpected areas, and how to be better listeners and observers in general. Most importantly, spending time with our co-designers has given us a sincere desire to come up with the best solutions to their problems.
💡 Tip 1: During user interviews, take note of participants who are very aware of, and eloquent about, their needs and pain points. These same participants are usually passionate about finding ways to improve their problems and expand their potential solutions too.
💡 Tip 2: When possible, recruit these past interviewees or other research participants as your co-designers. Opt for participants you’ve talked to before, so there’s a degree of familiarity between you and your co-designers. That level of comfort will help draw out deeper insights from them.
Is co-design the new future of design?
The co-design sessions we had for Capy only added up to about three hours in total. That’s not a long duration but it definitely left a lasting impact on us as a team. We had a taste of what is possible when we design with our users, putting them at the center of our design processes, and empowering them to make a difference.
As Don Norman said, meaningful social changes and innovation can only happen when there is a collaboration between people who do the design and people who will be affected by the design. Is co-design the new future of design? We may not have the answers now but the team at 55 Minutes is excited to see what co-design can bring to our future projects!
So, what’s the next thing you’re going to co-design?
Thanks to Luke for his contributions to this piece 🙂
