Codesign is a democratic process. It gets a range of people to describe their work-world as they see it, to uncover the whole picture regarding data, systems and processes. 

Traditional web or system design discovery approaches tend to be blinkered from the start, as they generally talk to a standard cross-section of people: a few people from IT, some people from management and possibly a few ‘subject matter experts’ whose teams are happy to ship them off to be part of a project for a while.

When participants feel deeply involved and empowered in the creation process, this leads to better overall project engagement and smoother approval steps. It also helps change managers to see what makes participants feel anxious or negative, so they can address these issues directly or in the onboarding or training stages.

Codesign fast-tracks the design and development process by giving designers and developers essential information right up front, and it can significantly increase the likelihood of staff and managers supporting any resulting system or process changes as they feel involved in the process from the beginning. 

The way we encourage a range of people to be part of the codesign process means it’s not necessary to build in separate steps to encourage buy-in, identify champions and create formal change management activities.

“We’ve found that it’s extremely effective to democratise the design process and serve up a product or service that really hits the mark by redistributing the power from one or two designers who may have innate bias, to a group of stakeholders and/or users who are deeply familiar with the product or service. It’s a joy to facilitate co-design sessions that inform the design process and lead to  highly useful features that will work for the people who’ll be using a system.” - Rachel Human-centred Design & Change Lead

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