Skip to content

Resources

PLANNING YOUR CO-DESIGN ACTIVITY

Including unique and diverse needs in the co-design process is an effective way to ensure our design adapts to a broader range of needs. However, involving citizens in a co-design process may seem expensive, time consuming, and overwhelming. This template provides a list of items to consider when planning, executing, facilitating, and reporting a co-design process based on your goals, context, and resources. It can be used in any format or order, and adapted for your own processes by adding, removing, and modifying its content. If you have any comments regarding this template or the following resources, please send us an email via cities@idrc.ocadu.ca.

A list of resources is provided to elaborate on each section of the template. These resources include best practices, reflections of our own co-design experiences, and practical tools to plan a co-design process. We encourage all those involved in co-design to share their perspectives, methods, challenges, and learnings by completing this form and contributing to this public resource.

RESOURCE TYPES

  • Perspectives
  • Reflections
  • Tools

What topics to explore?

Identifying project scope in collaboration with the community helps to incorporate specific needs and contexts.
Read more
Defining the purpose of exploring a topic facilitates the development of a co-design process.
Read more
The clarity and openness of a topic can impact how participants discuss and develop ideas.
Read more

Who is going to be there?

Actively integrating people at the margins helps to develop ideas that can benefit everyone.
Read more
It is challenging to create an environment where participants with diverse needs can collaborate.
Read more
Engaging marginalized groups in a co-design process is difficult due to past mistreatments.
Read more
Understanding who is currently excluded from the process helps to develop new ways of engagement.
Read more

How to build trust?

It takes humility, respect, and transparency to earn your collaborators and participants trust.
Read more
To build trust, participants should be clearly informed of their rights and terms of participation.
Read more
Building lasting relationships requires open mindedness, transparency, and clear negotiation of roles.
Read more
Contributor license agreements clarify terms of participation and ownership of contributions.
Read more
Getting participant insight about the process helps to build trust and refine future events.
Read more
Group attribution forms offer an efficient way to attribute collective work.
Read more
The Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation helps to assess your community engagement efforts.
Read more

What activities to plan?

To enable equal participation, activities should be accessible and understandable for all participants.
Read more
Accessibility of an activity relies on its physical presentation, format, length and use of language.
Read more
Facilitating a group with different perspectives and needs requires open mindedness and flexibility.
Read more
This list highlights the items that should be considered when planning a collaborative event.
Read more
This warm-up activity encourages individuals to engage in a playful and collaborative ideation process.
Read more
Links to all the worksheets we used throughout our co-design process are provided here.
Read more
An inclusive city imaginary is a collaborative tool to explore city designs from different perspectives.
Read more
This tool enables different levels of participation from individual reflections to group discussion.
Read more
Story puzzle encourages participants to collaborate to put different pieces of a story back together.
Read more
This tool helps participants to reflect on their urban experiences and identify high/low risk areas.
Read more

What to do with the output?

Identify the means that enable people to change and expand the end product to fit their needs.
Read more
Co-design leads to unmeasurable experiences that can deeply impact the community.
Read more
Open processes enable greater participation, however, they should protect their participants’ privacy.
Read more
Inclusion of all ideas was difficult sometimes due to lack of context, limited or non-legible notes.
Read more
It is essential to openly share the results of co-design events with the participants and the community.
Read more

How to manage logistics?

People with diverse needs require different communication channels to be engaged.
Read more
Accessibility of the venue has a direct impact on full participation of those attending.
Read more
Organizing a co-design event includes factors that the team cannot control and should be ready to adapt to.
Read more
Access guides help to reduce the anxiety of being in a new place and among a group of strangers.
Read more
This list includes some of the main costs inherent in running of a co-design event.
Read more
These strategies provide basic instructions for facilitating diverse co-design events.
Read more
A respectful, clear, and well planned invitation is the first step to build trust and engage people.
Read more
This to-do list helps co-design organizers to delegate tasks and track progress.
Read more