How to use this kit
Goal of this kit
The goal of the Community-Led Co-design Kit is to provide an open toolkit for sharing knowledge about how to do co-design that is led by community members and organizations, and to share how this process contributes to the creation of more inclusive designs.
Who this kit is for
Everyone is welcome to use and contribute to this kit.
We especially welcome those who:
- Don’t have “design” in their job title. The co-design process can benefit anyone who designs or is impacted by design, which is to say, everyone.
- Are a part of a community organization or movement. You may be curious about what design entails and how it can be used to create a more intentional and inclusive planning process for anything you’re working on - whether it be a program, a process, or a website.
- Are designers who want change. You want to critically question the assumptions and methods of design, and want to intentionally develop your practice in ways that prioritize inclusivity and equity.
What’s in the kit
The kit contains the following types of resources:
- Guides - these include considerations and suggested practices for specific topics, such as facilitation, remote co-design, or accessibility.
- Activities - these provide more detailed suggested practices that contribute to making co-design more inclusive. They include things like planning your co-design activities, ensuring accessibility for your co-designers, and identifying your community facilitators.
- Tools - these are adaptable templates or documents that you can use and adapt in your co-design process. For example, a tool can be a letter template for recruiting co-designers, or a table you can fill out to generate design ideas.
- Case studies - these provide examples of the different ways that community-led co-design can be practiced, based on specific design projects. The approach can look dramatically different depending on the context of your project, collaborators, and community.
How the kit is organized
The resources in this kit are loosely organized around the following building blocks of co-design:
- Partnerships - the resources under this building block can help you to find the people you’d like to collaborate with, who are active participants in their community. You create the project together: what the project is about, what your collective goals and priorities are, and what the scope is.
- Community involvement - resources found here will help you to bring members of the community you’re working with into the co-design process. Community members can participate in many ways, including but not limited to: planning the co-design process, facilitating the co-design sessions, or being a participant in the sessions.
- Co-design planning - these resources can help you plan all that is needed for the co-design engagement, including activities, logistics, meeting accessibility needs, scheduling, and more.
- Facilitation - these resources can help you to create the environment and conditions for participants to be able to fully contribute, and to support community leaders in doing so themselves.
- Ideas and outcomes - resources found here relate to capturing and working with the ideas and outcomes that emerge from the co-design sessions, including how to document and synthesize them, and how to address questions such as attribution.
- Reflections - these resources will help you take the time to reflect on the co-design process including what went well and what could be improved for next time.
Where to begin
Read the introduction first. To get a sense of what we mean by co-design and community-led co-design, consider reading the Introduction to Community-led co-design document first. This document provides a more detailed description of our unique definition of and approach to co-design.
Browse by building block. If there is a particular aspect of co-design that you’re interested in learning more about, you can start there.
Browse by community collections (TBD). We’ve asked some of our community members to put together collections of kit resources that they have found most useful. These include collections for:
- Beginners - those new to co-design
- Designers and researchers
- Community organizations