Some reflections on co-production

Here are my reflections following our first co-production project in the content design team at Scope. You can read more about the project here.

Decision making

Who makes the decisions? This an important difference between a user-centred approach and a coproduction approach.

In the user-centred approach, disabled people and their families are ‘users’. We do research with our ‘users’ to help us make decisions, but decisions are still made by the ‘specialists’.

The aim of coproduction is that disabled people have equal power in decision-making. But we also need to make sure that we base decisions on evidence and not on personal preference. And that the decisions we made were workable. So in our rules for how we would work together we said:

• Everyone has an equally meaningful role and responsibility in this project
• We will listen to data rather personal preference: we will be data-led
• We will make evidence-based decisions through shared discussion. The product owner has the final say on practicalities (cost and technical constraints).

Life experiences

Our coproducers brought their experiences of life as disabled people to the project. They brought new perspectives that I don’t think we would otherwise have considered. For example, will some disabled people view simpler designs as ‘dumbing down’?

When coproducers talk about their own experiences, it’s easy to blur the line between coproduction and user research. And disability is so broad — how do we avoid skewing design decisions based on the experiences and perspectives of 1 or 2 coproducers?

We need to be clear about what we expect people to share about their lives. And about how we use that information.

We cannot expect coproducers to be the voice of all disabled people. But when they are part of the design decision it’s a small incremental step into making the design process inclusive.