CO-DESIGNING RESEARCH

Planning for Purposeful Co-design

Reflect on how to apply co-design meaningfully, based on what the project needs and what’s possible within your team, timeline, and goals.

Co-design can’t do everything, and it doesn’t need to. What matters most is using it with care where it can shape authentic decisions and support meaningful collaboration.

This guide steps through a practical reflection process. It aims to help you identify where co-design can have the most impact, and how to apply it with purpose and clarity.

Focus on where co-design will matter most

Co-design is incredibly valuable when the work involves shaping, testing, or communicating ideas that could impact people’s lives.

Co-design is most useful when:

You’re shaping the research question that reflects community priorities

You’re developing methods, tools or interventions that need to work in the real world, and/or

You’re making decisions about how the research will be shared or implemented.

Co-design is also valuable when you want to:

Strengthen relationships and build trust within a community

Include voices that are often excluded from research decision-making, or

Work in culturally safe, inclusive, and participatory ways.

The Summer Foundation’s approach to Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) resources is a strong example. Co-design was focused on creating practical tools and developing an evaluation framework area where lived experience could have a direct and lasting influence.

Focus on quality

Grant applicants can sometimes feel pressure to include co-design in every stage of the research. But meaningful, focused co-design in one or two key parts of the project is better than trying to stretch it thin across the whole timeline. However, co-production methods should be used throughout research projects. Co-production means sharing power through the whole research process.

The most important thing is to:

Be specific about what is co-designed and what isn’t

Explain how co-design has shaped (or will shape) key decisions

Make sure people with lived experience are involved early enough to influence and design the work.

Check yourself: the ‘to’, ‘for’, or ‘with’ spectrum

A helpful reflection tool drawn from Emma Blomkamp's work is to ask:

Research to people: The community is informed but not involved

Research for people: The community gives input but doesn’t share power

Research with people: The community helps shape decisions and outcomes

If you’re aiming for co-design, focus on the ‘with’ end of the spectrum and show how you’re moving in that direction.

In summary

Strong co-design should be used meaningfully, and where it matters most. When you are using co-design, let it be authentic, let it happen early and make it count.

Co-design is a practical way of putting the NDRP Principles into action. In particular, our commitment to valuing lived experience, strengthening disability research capacity, and supporting research that makes a real difference in people’s lives.

Find out more about the NDRP Principles.

Back to the Co-design resources page.