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Design with Clarity

Setting Your Co-Design Process Up for Success

In this module, we explore the common barriers you may face long after planning—and the power of co-design to mitigate those along the way. We describe several lenses for seeing these barriers ahead of time, and explain the impact having clarity about this at the outset can have the rest of the way.

FROM PRINCIPAL TO PRACTICE

On its surface, the rallying cry of co-design is both radical and straightforward: include stakeholders in the creative process, and smart, responsive, sustainable initiatives will follow. Our main objective for each co-design effort is to create something impactful for the people who need it, something with staying power.

In order to succeed in this, we need to consider the environment we’re operating within, the individuals expected to implement the final design, and the relationships they have with one another. Sometimes, especially with complex, intractable problems, good solutions can fail—not because of a fault of their design, but because of challenges that stem from the reality they are operating within. For example, an innovative vaccination program won’t succeed if local health offices aren’t empowered to make quick adjustments based on health data. A strategy to bridge digital divides can only go so far without the buy-in of rural community centers. A new participatory planning initiative may not succeed if city planners and neighborhood residents have not built up the capacity to collaborate with one another.

When facilitated to do so, co-design can help build the missing skills of stakeholders, it can give people practice working together, or it can foster buy-in among important groups.

These challenges will vary depending on the project, the constituency, and the context—but they are nearly always present. And in the throes of trying to include stakeholders in a creative moment, despite their importance, these structural barriers are easy to forget. In fact, these possible barriers can have such an impact on the success or failure of a co-design project that we should think through them at the very beginning of every project.

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Bridging the “Principle to Practice” Gap

We all know that taking the leap from ideas to implementation isn’t easy. But what happens when it seems nearly impossible?

Wikipedia, arguably the largest co-creation exercise in history, brings together countless volunteer editors to contribute to the world’s knowledge. As Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation says, “It’s a good thing it works in practice because it would never work in theory.” But how has the platform overcome this logical gap, and somewhere along the way built a millions-strong movement for free and open knowledge? Find out in this episode of the Design With podcast.

THE LENSES OF CO-DESIGN

Among the many barriers to successful implementation that we have encountered in our work, we have identified five of the most common—and five ways to look at them as opportunities. We call these the “lenses of co-design.” The good news is that co-design (if we keep these barriers in mind) can actually help us overcome them. When facilitated to do so, co-design can help build the missing skills of stakeholders, it can give people practice working together, or it can foster buy-in among important groups. But in order to do that, we must work toward overcoming them from the start of each effort.

Given the issue you are addressing and the diversity of people affected by it, anticipate the possible implementation challenges your organization might face, and the tensions that might arise as you move toward a solution. Imagine how an imperfect solution might play out, Are there risks specific to this issue? And what assumptions are you making—even if your ideas are at an early stage. Are you relying on key partners being fully excited about an outcome? Are you assuming other actors will continue to work together even after your creative work is done? Are you reliant on a skill-set that is not yet fully developed where it may be needed? Use these possible barriers to decide on the best approach—or lens—for your co-design.

Lens: Enabling Future Collaboration

Barrier

Stakeholders and implementers lack the tools or relationships to work together effectively, but will need to do so as an initiative launches and adapts.

Objective

To create a foundation for working together in the future, through developing individuals’ process awareness and skills, and testing/improving organizational tools for collaborating with outsiders.

When to Use it

Go for this lens when collaboration during implementation is essential. Put more emphasis on how participants work together in co-design to build shared language, tools, and relationships that can carry over afterward. Beware not to assume everyone will have the resources or motivation to continue to collaborate intensively.

Lens: Organizing a Community

Barrier

A key network of stakeholders is currently fragmented or does not work together, but a coordinated, organized network of stakeholders will need to champion a co-designed solution, circulate it among their constituents, or advocate for a complementary policy.

Objective

To connect or stabilize a community around an issue, through relationship-building, collective agenda-setting, and other opportunities to start working together

When to Use it

Go for this lens when your initiative will rely on a strong community to advocate and disseminate outputs, or when co-design can provide a rallying point for otherwise disjointed stakeholders. Beware not to rush this process (community building is a long-term project) and value the informal events and exchanges that bolster human relationships.

Lens: Building Buy-In

Barrier

A specific group(s) of stakeholders co-designed solution are frequently excluded from decisionmaking or generally skeptical of solutions that have either unfamiliar or top-down origins, but they will need to play a key role or advocate for its uptake among peer implementers or beneficiaries in order for it to succeed.

Objective

To strengthen participants’ investment in the problem area, emerging solutions from co-design, and/or the collaborative decisionmaking process itself.

When to Use it

Go for this lens when key stakeholders will play big roles in implementation, when leaders are skeptical of an approach, or in messy, hierarchical environments where operational actors are often handed mandates without their input. Invite participants to be a bigger part of the co-design process planning itself. Beware of over-emphasizing the perspectives of leaders whose buy-in is necessary.

Lens: Exchanging Skills

Barrier

Stakeholders lack certain skills, or those skills are concentrated within a different group, but an initiative requires distributed expertise or higher proficiency among certain stakeholders

Objective

To build knowledge around issue areas or technical expertise, through exchange among participants or structured training from outside facilitators.

When to Use it

Go for this lens when thinking through highly technical problems or solutions, and in environments where distributed actors will need to be making decisions or maintaining an initiative. Use exchanging skills as a prompt to get stakeholders working across silos, and beware how long it can take to reach the proficiency required.

Lens: Distributing Decisionmaking

Barrier

The power to make decisions is concentrated in administrators or executives, but certain stakeholders will need to make timely decisions about the evolution of an initiative to help it adapt or meet its stated goals.

Objective

To enable stakeholders to make adjustments or give directions to an initiative, building trust among traditional decisionmakers, and increasing their willingness to distribute responsibility

When to Use it

Go for this lens in situations where local contexts have big differences in how they experience and address problems, or when addressing a very complex problem in an hierarchical context. Emphasize the rationale for distributing decisionmaking, and understand what reservations participants have about sharing power. Beware the sensitive nature of this lens, and put a lot of care into how you facilitate your process.

A PROCESS ORGANIZED THROUGH YOUR LENS

What are the challenges you see, beyond the immediate co-design need? Being explicit at the outset about which you want to prioritize will have cascading benefits. It will have implications for every major decision: how to prioritize resources, whom to recruit, how to structure participant interactions, where to focus people’s creative input, etc. For example, you might engage a different participant community if you are trying to build buy-in versus facilitating an exchange of skills (or, you may engage the same community but would facilitate a workshop differently). Having clarity here helps communicate the expected outcomes and needs to participants, and eventually evaluate the effectiveness of the collaboration.

Without planning for possible barriers ahead of time, a co-design process risks falling short, and wasting the time and resources of organizations, partners, and participants

CLARITY FOR YOU & FOR YOUR COLLABORATORS

The promise of co-design is real. But so are the risks: without planning for possible barriers ahead of time, a co-design process risks falling short, and wasting the time and resources of organizations, partners, and participants. Perhaps more dangerously, it can undermine your efforts, diminish your stakeholders’ (and colleagues’) faith in the effectiveness of this process, the sincerity of your offer to collaborate, even the eventual promise of whatever product, initiative, or strategy is generated through the collaboration.

On the other hand, getting crystal clear about the barriers you expect and the co-design lens best suited to address them will have ripple effects throughout the process, guiding you towards the right stakeholders to include and the right methods to use.

Next up:

Module 3: Who Should Be in the Room?