UX New Zealand 2013

Co-design and ideation have become commonly used words, not just within UX practice, but across a range of business disciplines. However, in practice they remain new territory for most – and with business owners often desperate for quick results and designers traditionally keen to own and take credit for their ideas, co-design can become a tick-box exercise rather than an opportunity to add value and innovate.

In the presentation I’ll share our experiences and approaches we’ve learnt for facilitating ‘genuine’ co-design with customers and New Zealand Post people, including:

• What we mean by ‘genuine’ co-design
• Where and how co-design fits into the design process
• How we’ve used co-design to provide first-hand customer insights that get stakeholder buy-in
• How and where to find good design-thinkers inside and outside your organisation
• And the role of our designers in ‘genuine’ co-design – as facilitator, analyst and story-teller.

I’ll feature case studies from our work with Massey University, where we’ve embedded co-design briefs into student course work and our co-design engagements with grass-roots NZ Post employees, as well as showing some of the visual prompts and infographics we’ve used to get the most out of our insight gathering and sharing.

This presentation will be of particular interest to in-house design practitioners looking for better stakeholder buy-in and experience design consultants and agencies seeking more meaningful client relationships.