CREATEd Co-Design Toolkit
from the Center for Research Use in Education
PREPARE
IDEATE & NEGOTIATE
PROTOTYPE & REFINE
MOBILIZE
The second stage of co-design takes the end products of the first phase – key messages and implications – and begins to envision how the messages can be shared with or taken up by the intended audience. During this phase, the team will hone in on an audience and its needs, set clear goals for the project, brainstorm options, and make a decision about what to create.
The goal:
Determine how the research messages will be expressed and what format they will take, your dissemination tactics, and your goals for measurement and evaluation of success.
The participants:
Team Members:
Researcher(s), Facilitator, Practitioner(s), Designer
Optional:
Mobilization Partners
If there is an organization that will be supporting dissemination and uptake of the co-designed resource, it may be helpful to have them at the table to contribute to decisions – particularly about dissemination strategies – or just to listen in to the process so they understand the team’s goals.
The deliverables:
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Resource idea
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Meeting notes
Tools for this Stage:
Suggested stage plan
Note that there are many different components to this stage and many tools to support those conversations. You may find that using all of them is burdensome and instead choose ones that are most helpful to the team, or adapt some to simplify or shorten the process. Or if you feel your team will need a lot of scaffolding, you may use all of them. The amount of time and effort in this stage will depend on those decisions.
Plan the meeting
As always, schedule a time that works for your team. To accomplish the goals of this work session, we find groups usually require 2.5 hours or more. To make this meeting length more palatable and to reduce discussion fatigue, consider scheduling a 15- or 30-minute break during the meeting when folks can step away and recharge. This may also help the team commit to a longer session.
Prepare and share an agenda in advance of the meeting that lays out the purposes for the session, the anticipated outcomes, and the resources the team will use to achieve them.
SAMPLE:
Meeting Agenda
0:00-0:05 Overview of session
0:05-0:15 Team building activities
0:15-0:45. Audience Activity
0:45-0:55 Break
0:55-1:55 (Re)Centering Tool
1:55-2:05 Break
2:05-2:20 Brainstorming
2:20-2:35 Decision-making
2:35-2:45 Debrief and questions
*Note that these times are minimum suggested times and many teams, particularly newly convened teams, may benefit from longer discussions of these issues.
Team building
At this point, the team is familiar with each other, but there is still work to do to build and sustain trust - particularly as we start to move into decision-making. Consider where your team is in terms of relationship-building and relational equity, and pick activities that give members a chance to get to know each other more deeply. For some teams, this might be keeping it light and social, but for others it might mean giving them a chance to talk about a substantive issue or concern. Remember to uphold the norms established by the team or to revisit them if needed.
Audience activity
One of the first steps for any design process is not only deciding upon a target audience, but seeking to understand your audience’s perspectives and needs.
The co-design team includes members (and more can be added) of the target audience(s) who can speak to perspectives and needs. However, there may also be times when the team feels they need additional time and information to more authentically understand their audience. The Audience Activity offers a template for collecting and using information, but where that information comes from and how it is collected can vary widely.
If you don’t have the resources or time to consult direct members of your audience or none are on the team, team insights can be useful, but anticipate that they can lead to assumptions. The team can combat the tendency to assume by:
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Consulting research about audience needs, experiences, or practices (which often does include direct access to your audience, and has reliable insights); and
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Building into your project timeline a specific plan to involve target audience members in the testing of your solution later. Just know that a little more empathy now can save a lot of time and energy (on imprecise solutions) later.
PRO TIP
True empathy helps us avoid connecting unrelated issues, taking too limited or too broad a view, or failing to spot opportunities or obstacles that someone closer to the issue could easily identify.
As facilitator, a way to spot assumptions that lack empathy is by watching for solutions and opinions formed quickly, and defended vehemently, using only an individual’s point of view. An empathic view, on the other hand, is thoughtful, considers many facets, and is open to critique and influence. The participant who is making an assumption may turn out to be correct; but no idea is above challenge, and a ‘correct’ idea should be able to be defended with evidence, not just opinion.
However, it is worth noting that systems of evidence themselves are biased and often skew towards the experiences of White men, meaning that we should also intentionally make space for the lived experiences and center the narratives of those who have been historically marginalized.'
You may have direct members of your audience working on your project team, who can help tell a story that builds immediate and authentic empathy. But some team members also may:
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Empathize once-removed, such as principals speaking for teachers, or parents speaking for their children, having close relationships to the audience but not first-hand or current knowledge;
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Overstate their empathy (‘I work in a school, I understand what guidance counselors face’), which can lack nuance; or
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Generalize based on experience (‘All guidance counselors want…’). This can be an issue of oversimplifying, but also of equity. Not all of any group will feel the same way or face the same challenges, so ‘all’ or ‘always’ statements made while building empathy should trigger healthy skepticism.
The (Re)Centering Tool
The next activity helps team members to develop shared goals for the codesign work as well as clarify the resources, or assets, available to the team - both of which will anchor decision-making throughout the process and ensure the continued centering of equity in goals and process. The forced-copy version of the (Re)Centering tool here includes discussions of each of the following topics:
The tool itself will be revisited in several stages of the process, so it is organized to be revisited at each of those points. The left column is for initial discussions at this point in the process and to guide decision-making. However, as the team moves through future stages, there are opportunities to re-center the team’s work around the opportunities and assets established here, or to revise them as needed. Save the tool for use by the team at these future stages.
PRO TIP
The prompts in the chart will require facilitated conversation. Depending on the team, the time, and the complexity of the research, facilitators may wish to use additional tools to organize the discussion or solicit ideas (e.g., collaborative Google Slides documents or other virtual whiteboards).
Brainstorming ideas
Engage the team in generating ideas for the product that will help them achieve their goals. Creativity and innovation are welcome – consideration of costs, such as time and money, comes later. Keep track of ideas in a place where the team can easily access or see them during the conversation.
Use the Brainstorming tool (offered as both a PDF and an editable Google Slides version) to generate ideas. Note that some ground rules are on page 1. They are best practice but editable by the facilitator or team.
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Ask the team to freely generate ideas for what kinds of products, tools, resources, or activities might help that shift to occur. This is creative, innovative, free thinking time.
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Once ideas are generated, move to the next set of slides, asking the team to nominate ideas that are closest suited to the project parameters for further discussion.
PRO TIP
Facilitating brainstorming can be tricky. Consider the following guidance:
DO:
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Come up with as many ideas as possible.
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Remind people of ground rules.
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Encourage everyone present to contribute
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Keep track of time.
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Give all ideas space.
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Build on or adapt other people’s ideas
DON'T:
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Interrupt.
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Positively or negatively react to any post (e.g., “good one!”) either verbally or physically
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Give up if they are stuck.
Decision-making time
At this point, the team needs to move to a decision about how to proceed: what will they create? To move from brainstormed options to a final decision, help the team come to consensus on the final set of products in Slide 3 of the Brainstorming tool.
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If possible, group or organize similar ideas to streamline the conversation.
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Discuss the pros and cons of each option and keep track of key points. The Resource Selection Essential Questions tool may be helpful in this conversation.
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Collect feedback on agreement, e.g.:
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Poll the team on gradients of agreement (e.g., from wholehearted endorsement, support with reservations, don’t like but support, do not support, more discussion needed OR I really like it, good enough, mixed feelings, prefer something different, don’t like it)
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Ask the team to rank ideas in a chart
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Consider other strategies, such as a diamond diagram
This may take multiple rounds, eliminating or adapting options along the way.
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Once a single idea emerges as the top contender, affirm the team’s decision.
In any decision process, be sure to uphold the norms of the team established early in the co-design and to attend to participatory equity. The facilitator can intervene at any point to emphasize norms, create opportunities for additional voices, or suggest a different, more democratic strategy for team decisions.
PRO TIP
At this point, the team may acknowledge the need for additional expertise and resources. For example, perhaps the communications designer needs support from a website designer or graphic artist to achieve the vision for the project. Or, perhaps, the team identified an intermediary partner (e.g., a national organization) to help meet audience needs and effectively reach intended audiences. The opportunity to discuss this is formalized in Stage 3, but if a need is documented at this point, the facilitator should lead outreach and help members (ideally before the next meeting) get up to speed by sharing information and resources from prior phases.
Wrapping up
The last step in this stage is to ensure that the work is documented and available for the team to refer back to as needed. This includes saving a few minutes at the end of the meeting to debrief on the process, ask for final comments or questions, and to briefly communicate next steps.
After the meeting, the facilitator should:
Follow up with the team to share decisions, making revisions if needed.
Follow up and “onboard” with potential new team members, if applicable.
File everything in the team’s management system.
Copy contents of goal setting and the resource inventory into the (Re)Centering Tool for future use.
