Impact Trust • Working glossary

Co-design / co-production

Designing together with, rather than for, the people affected

Details

Our Take
Now mainstream in development and humanitarian circles. The risk is that it becomes a label applied to processes that are not genuinely participatory -- a workshop at the end of a design process is not co-design. The test: could participants have changed the fundamental direction, or only the details? Worth pressing: who held the pen, who set the agenda, and who had veto power?
Examples of Use
Design thinking, participatory research, governance
Synonyms/Variants
Participatry design
User-centred design
Typical everyday wording
Participatory design, co-creation