PREPARE

IDEATE & NEGOTIATE

PROTOTYPE & REFINE

MOBILIZE

STAGE

Test & Refine

Stage 7 is about getting the co-designed resource into the hands of key audiences. The team meets to develop audience lists, messages, strategies, and an implementation plan, and then carries out the mobilization and dissemination activities. This stage builds on earlier tools like the Audience Activity, Framing the Research, and Best Practices in Dissemination. Equity remains central, with attention to inclusive language, design, and outreach.

PRO TIP

The final stage of the CREATEd CoDesign toolkit is to evaluate. It can be helpful to link conversations about dissemination to plans to monitor and evaluate that progress. Consider combining some of the discussions and decisions of Stages 7 and 8.

The goal:

Share the final product with the target audience/s and promote its uptake or use in policy or practice.

The participants:

Team Members:

Researcher(s), Designer, Facilitator, Practitioner(s)

Optional:

Partners - particularly intermediary organizations and brokers with strong networks for reaching your audience - can be engaged in this stage, if they aren’t already. Especially consider engaging those who can help reach traditionally marginalized segments of your audience.

The deliverables:

Updated dissemination planner
Audience lists
Meeting notes

Tools for this Stage:

Building and Supporting an Effective Team

Foster equity, trust, and collaboration to achieve collaborative goals.

Best Practices in Dissemination

Plan, launch, and assess how your resource reaches its audience.

Suggested stage plan

Plan the meetings

Schedule a time that works for your team. Balance the time needed to work through the goal of this phase against availability and fatigue. We recommend a minimum of 90 minutes for this phase of the work.
Prepare and share an agenda with the purposes for the session, the anticipated outcomes, and the resources the team will use to achieve them.
Share with the team the Best Practices in Dissemination Guide in advance of the meeting so they can re-familiarize themselves with the goals and process.

SAMPLE:

Meeting Agenda

0:00-0:10 Introductions and overview of session

0:10-0:20 Team building activities

0:20-0:50 Develop plan for dissemination

0:50-1:20 Develop plan for evaluation

0:50-1:00 Debrief and next steps

*if adding Stage 8 planning, consider the following:

0:00-0:10 Introductions and overview of session

0:10-0:20 Community building activities

0:20-0:50 Develop plan for dissemination

0:50-1:00 Debrief and next steps

*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

Sustaining equitable relationships and trust is ongoing work. Keep up the team-building by engaging team members in an activity that celebrates progress and reminds them of what they have accomplished as a team.

Planning

The core content of this meeting is to plan for how to get the design to its intended audience by completing the Engagement and Dissemination Planner that you worked on in Phase 3.

To do so, use the Best Practices in Dissemination guide to decide on:

Specific audiences. We may want to reach teachers, but may not have a list of teachers so will need to identify ways to reach them. That may include reaching out to educator associations, identifying social media influencers, or other groups composed of teachers. This discussion should build on team members’ knowledge of the field and professional networks and build a list of audiences and their contact information (where possible - this may be a task for after the meeting as well!).
Strategies and channels. What is the best way to connect with audiences? Phone calls? Emails? Social media? Newsletters? Name the ways that the audiences will be reached.
Message. How will you communicate about the resource you are sharing? Use language that reflects your knowledge of the audience from Stage 2 Audience Activity and the Stage 3 Framing the Research activity.
A feasible timeline. Who will do what and when? Considering the equitable distribution of work and benefits, write the plan down and make sure you engage with the team’s (Re)Centering Tool to ensure goal alignment and feasibility.

As with all products created through co-design, the team should attend to equity awareness in mobilization strategies, for example, using people-first language, carefully considering colors, icons, and shapes to avoid stereotypes, and recognizing diverse audience needs. Feel free to revisit the Design Review Checklist as a reminder!