We attended a workshop recently on Co-design and we were there to stress the importance of involving end users in the design process. The workshop was part of research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (see below a short description of the project). So many times we hear from you about the poorly designed products and services that with just a little more thought would have been so much better. We hope that through our input a new model of design will make this exclusion a thing of the past.

The group need your help so here is your chance to influence the future of design process research 

• How can we find ways to bring together special interest groups with the objective to identify and solve common problems by design?

• How can we involve you in this process?

• What are the obstacles you face in participating in this type of co-design or co-creative process?

• What would inspire you to be involved in this type of project?

To take part in the Survey Click here

Summary of the research project

The “Scaling up co-design research and practice: building community-academic capacity and extending reach” project is a collaboration between four Universities (the Open University, Northumbria University, Sheffield Hallam University and Brunel University) and research partners including the Blackwood Foundation, The Glass-House Community Led Design, Flossie and Silent Cities. 

The aim of the project is to co-design research ideas and co-produce research outputs involving communities, community organizations and academic institutions. The central theme of the project is scaling up co-design: how can co-design enable communities and organisations solve problems they couldn’t solve when working in isolation and how they (and those they support) become sustainable and resilient. In the first workshop we identified two main questions:

1. Reaching and involving hard to reach/excluded people or special interest groups

2. Spreading /cascading the practice of co-design to communities and relevant stakeholders