Co-creation... what it is not

And how to avoid order-taking workshops

No users were consulted in the making of this AI generated image

In the last week I have been head-desk over job ads. Specifically those for Service Design roles.

So many roles seem to ignore things like research / engaging with users (leaving it to pure-play Researchers) or prototyping / any kind of actual creative design activity (leaving it to Product Designers).

Heaven knows what’s left for a Service Designer to do.

Oh yes, that’s right.

Workshops.

Co-creation.

Maps.

Now, I'm not saying that if you work in a large organisation where you have all of these individuals with all these specialised pure-play skill sets that you shouldn't work with them on your project.

However, the role of a Service Designer should not be relegated to taking instructions from stakeholders and mapping the experience they decide to invent for and inflict on customers and colleagues.

And don't get me started on co-creation.

Oh okay let's get me started on co-creation.

What is co-creation?

Co-creation involves working together with people from different groups. These will be stakeholders and designers but will also absolutely definitely include customers, users, colleagues, or anyone else involved in delivering or experiencing a service.

In practical terms this might mean having customers, frontline staff, managers and engineers all in the same room brainstorming or prototyping together.

The aim is to make sure the service in question meets everyone's needs whether those are customer needs or internal workflows or employee tasks or overall business goals and objectives.

Co-creation happens early on, getting everyone involved upfront and creating a sense of shared ownership that leads to better more innovative solutions for everyone.

It has a second benefit which is building trust and understanding between all the different parties which makes it easier to work together through the rest of the project, which is why it is often done upfront.

Gen AI takes your stakeholder’s orders so you don’t have to

What is it not?

Whenever I hear someone suggest co-creation, I have a small internal initial wince in anticipation of methodological pain. A bit like when someone suggests using eye-tracking.

Because often this will be stakeholders wanting to have a go at designing something.

Let’s be clear. Co-creation is absolutely not designers and stakeholders sitting in a room together, with no users involved at all, coming up with the answer from their brains.

But of course it depends..

I will caveat this that if you have absolutely no access to your users, but you have access to some other research, sources, or proxy users then.. of course bring those into the room and do your best with what you've got.

However it should not be your default to run these sessions without customers or users or if appropriate.. colleagues.

How to spot the difference

It's fairly easy to clarify the plan and intent when someone suggests co-creation or when you bring it into your design approach or methodology.

You either ask or you explain or you check that your stakeholders understand that you need to recruit users and participants beyond the immediate group you are working with.

If they don't want to recruit users and bring them into the process, then it is not creation it is order-taking.

And that's probably not what you planned to do with your career when you became a designer.

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