Implementing and evaluating co-design

Co-design is when an organisation and its stakeholders work together to design or rethink a service. As an approach it sits midway between consultation and fully user-led projects.

At NPC we believe many charities could be doing more to involve users in decisions which affect them. In many cases, the people that charities exist to help have little or no influence over those organisations’ decisions. Through our work on user involvement, we encourage charities and funders to explore how they can design and deliver solutions ‘with’ people rather than ‘to’ people, to build services that better address their needs.

We are pleased to offer this toolkit, in which we explore what co-design is and why it matters. Our five-stage process offers a roadmap for planning and implementing your co-design, with tips and tools for each of the five stages. We also explore how you can assess the outcomes of your co-design and the quality of your processes, and how to review and learn from the data.

We have written this with service delivery organisations in mind, but you can apply these principles to any organisation looking to start or improve its co-design.

To find out about what others are doing in the sector come to our training events and seminars, or speak with our team of consultants, who can provide bespoke support.