Designing Together
Studio Notes | Short Reads
by Sean Casey, Service Designer
You might have heard terms like “co-creation” and “co-design” before, these are buzzwords but put simply, these just mean ‘Designing Together’.
Designing together means bringing diverse stakeholders into the room to collaboratively work through challenges and generate innovative ideas for your service.
Services are complex by nature, involving multiple people with different perspectives, roles, and expertise. When these individuals come together and pool their knowledge, experiences, and creativity, the outcomes generated are often greater than the sum of these parts.
The first step to Designing Together is aligning everyone involved and establishing a common understanding of the challenges at hand. This alignment is essential as it ensures all participants share the same goals and objectives for the project. A great place to start is to visualise the flows of value, information, and interactions within a service on a system map. We often start projects by helping teams see precisely what is happening in their service, and the systems and processes which support it.
Once everyone’s aligned, co-design workshops are an effective way your teams can design together. These workshops bring together people from different teams, departments, and backgrounds to tackle problems collectively. By collaborating in a neutral and creative space, workshops can break down silos, gain exposure to fresh perspectives, and benefit from the diverse expertise present in the room.
Designing together holds numerous advantages for your organisation and the services you provide.
- Involving employees and stakeholders in the design process fosters a sense of empowerment and ownership. They become more invested in the project’s success and are more likely to embrace the changes it brings.
- When teams across the organisation work together from the outset, the chances of misunderstandings and miscommunications decrease. This alignment streamlines the implementation process, saving time and resources.
- Designing Together also establishes a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration within your organisation. This mindset extends beyond the co-design process and permeates other projects and processes.
Designing together is a key part of service design and an can even help transform your organisation’s way of thinking and operating. By harnessing the collective intelligence of your teams, customers, and stakeholders, you can solve complex challenges, create innovative solutions, and deliver exceptional services that truly meet the needs of your customers. That’s what we mean by Designing Together.
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