Co-Design Teams: Essential Roles & Considerations
Co-design is about bringing diverse perspectives together to create better outcomes. When addressing complex problems like unemployment, access to justice, or chronic health conditions, we need to include a wide range of people with relevant knowledge and experience. Rather than trying to get “everyone in the room” at the same time; forming a co-design team is an effective way to ensure your initiative is guided by the right mix of people.
Starting assumptions
Co-design uniquely brings together people with different kinds of knowledge and experience. Key considerations include:
The process will include diverse roles and perspectives
Core participants likely haven’t worked together before
Many participants won’t have taken part in genuine co-design before
Organisations need to support team formation and compensate people who share their expertise.
Core structure and roles
A well-structured co-design project typically involves:
Core Project Team
These people are employed to work on the project day-to-day. They’re responsible for driving the project forward and maintaining its momentum. Low budget projects may have just one or two people leading this work, likely filling many project roles alongside many other responsibilities. The following roles are essential.
The Convenor (aka Facilitator, Lead or Host)
Every co-design project needs someone who can bring people together and facilitate collaboration. This person might be a formal facilitator or a natural leader who can create an environment where diverse voices are heard and valued. To balance power dynamics, consider pairing a project lead or external facilitator with someone with lived experience, who can work together as co-convenors.
The Creator
Someone with specific design or making skills will help visualise and bring ideas to life. While every participant in co-design can be creative, having a (graphic/product/service) designer, artist or storyteller–or other relevant technical skills–can help to imagine, show and enact otherwise abstract ideas.
The Commissioner (or Sponsor)
This is the person or group who initiates and funds the project. Whether or not they sit on the project or co-design team, their support and understanding of co-design principles are essential for success.
2. Co-Design Team / Design Crew
This slightly broader group includes professionals and people with lived experience. While they might not be involved daily, the design crew participate in key workshops and decision-making moments.
Co-design teams vary in shape and size. I’ve seen them work best as a consistent group of 8-16 people meeting at key moments during a project.
Crucially, the team should include two main types of participant expertise (with some examples of people who may provide each):
Lived experience
People with personal experience of the issue/system
Family members, carers or friends
Community advocates
Professional experience
Front-line staff
Service providers
System administrators
Technical specialists
Academic researchers
Managers and decision-makers
Successful co-design teams also incorporate external perspectives, which may come from:
Designers, artists or creatives
Critical thinkers who can challenge assumptions
People who can buffer power differentials and/or support group facilitation
‘Provocateurs’ who bring fresh perspectives
3. Enabling Roles
Beyond these core participant types, several supporting roles can support co-design processes, either from within the team or with guidance and resources supplied from the sidelines.
Coordinator or organiser: handles logistics, scheduling, and practical arrangements.
Carer: provides moral, social or emotional support and checks in on team/participant wellbeing.
Coach or critical friend: provides external guidance and feedback on methods and processes.
Connector or broker: helps reach and build relationships with community members.
Inquirer: questions assumptions, makes sense of data, and helps to uncover the full picture through research, analysis and/or evaluation.
Intrapreneur: an ‘insider-outsider’ or ‘boundary spanner’ who navigates systems and makes change happen within large organisations.
4. Other Participants
More people will be involved in specific activities across the process – what KA McKercher (2020) calls the “big circle”. This will involve a mix of the expertise and roles described above, as well as people who need to be informed of your work but not highly involved. Specifically targeting and recruiting other participants at relevant moments will be how you reach a wider range of people when their input is needed, e.g. through research, design, development, and testing activities.
Building your team
When forming your co-design team, consider:
Who is supposed to benefit from this work?
Who might implements what’s being designed?
Who has decision-making power?
What support will team members need?
What biases might exist?
How to build new relationships?
Remember that roles can overlap. Core team members often wear multiple hats; and several participants might share a single role. The key is ensuring all essential functions are covered while maintaining a manageable team size.
You won’t always be able to recruit for ideal characteristics of co-designers, but if you can take them into account: inviting people who demonstrate the mindsets and principles of co-design will increase the likelihood of them working well together.
Of course, keep diversity in mind too. Where relevant and possible, ensure representation across:
Age and system experience
Gender and sexuality
Cultural and ethnic backgrounds
Abilities and disabilities
Don’t just assemble this diverse group, then hope for the best. Success in co-design requires creating a safe and productive environment for your team, particularly through:
Clear boundaries and agreements
Transparent communication
Regular check-ins and feedback mechanisms
Priming and between-meeting support.
Closing thoughts
You’re not doing co-design if you’re not forming a team that represents the key knowledge and experience needed for design and decision-making. With thoughtful consideration of roles and structures, you can build a team capable of tackling complex challenges and creating meaningful change.
Acknowledgements
The ideas here were strongly influenced by my experience working at Innovate Change (a social innovation agency in Auckland; from 2013 to 2016; now part of the Innovation Unit). This approach to co-design teams is well described by KA McKercher in their book Beyond Sticky Notes and also adopted and shared by the Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI).
Some other sources drawn on here—which offer examples of how other organisations approach co-design team formation—include NSW Health’s Agency for Clinical Innovation and ‘All of Us’, along with Metro North Health’s co-design framework.
See also the core roles in systemic design/innovation described by Leadbetter and Winhall and the UK Design Council.
Thanks to all the course participants who have tested out different versions of this framework over the last few years, as I have refined how I describe co-design teams!
