Co-Design As a Practice Framework

Co-design has become a familiar phrase in design culture, but the practice is still catching up. How can we work with communities, partners, and institutions in ways that genuinely redistribute power and lead to lasting change?

Join us for a virtual conversation with Dr. ir. Wina Smeenk, Professor of Societal Impact Design at Inholland University of Applied Sciences and founder of the Expertise Network Systemic Co-Design (ESC). Wina’s work focuses on co-designing with residents, communities, municipalities, and organizations to tackle complex social issues across cities and neighbourhoods.

In this special virtual DesignMeets, we’ll look at co-design as a practice framework, not just a method:

• Moving from designing for to designing with: how to build trust, safety, and reciprocity in engagements where power, lived experience, and institutional agendas are all in the mix.
• Tracing the arc from empathic insight to systemic change: how to avoid getting stuck in “nice workshops” and instead translate co-created understanding into policies, prototypes, pilots, and measurable outcomes.
• Lessons from doing co-design online and in hybrid formats: tools, facilitation strategies, ethics, and accessibility when stakeholders are spread across cities, bandwidths, and comfort levels with digital tools.
• What “co-design readiness” looks like inside teams and institutions: roles, skills, and leadership mindsets that enable ongoing collaboration, rather than one-off projects.

We’ll also dive into The Co-Design Canvas and Empathic Co-Design Canvas: why Wina developed them, their key building blocks, and how design and non-design teams can use them to structure co-design journeys from scoping through to impact. These tools have been tested in living labs and multi-stakeholder coalitions, and are designed to make power, interests, and responsibilities discussable from the very beginning.

This DesignMeets session is for anyone wrestling with significant challenges: designers, researchers, policymakers, community organizers, and educators who want co-design to lead to real change, not just good intentions. Whether you’re running participatory projects already or trying to convince your organization to try, you’ll walk away with language, tools, and examples you can put to work right away.

“Meaningful design solutions only emerge when all perspectives are at the table, including the most vulnerable. Co-design invites us to share ownership of complex challenges.”— Dr. ir. Wina Smeenk