Co-design workshop

Co-design (or collaborative design) is an approach that actively involves users in the design process, beyond simply consulting them. Users are not observed or questioned: they take part directly in generating solutions, in a workshop with designers and product teams. It is based on the principle that the people most affected by a problem are also those who hold the most relevant information to solve it.

User testing and co-design do not take place at the same point in the process. In the first case, the user reacts to a solution submitted by the team. In the second, they help build it. The two are complementary: co-design generates ideas anchored in real needs, user testing checks that the solutions designed do meet those needs.

The workshop relies on activities that allow non-designer participants to contribute without mastering design tools. Co-sketching, reworking user journeys or building usage scenarios are accessible to everyone. The principle remains the same: one phase to generate ideas, another to select them. The workshop is facilitated by the designer in charge of the project, often a UX practitioner supported by a lead, who balances contributions when the workshop brings together people at very different levels of seniority, such as decision-makers, users and technical experts.

It produces different results, not necessarily better in every respect. Ideas from co-design are often more grounded in real practices and more easily adopted by the users who took part. On the other hand, they can lack systemic consistency or technical feasibility. Co-design is most valuable when the problem to solve is complex, poorly defined, or when user buy-in is a critical success factor.

No. It requires a significant investment of time (recruitment, workshop organisation, analysis) and is only relevant if users have direct experience of the problem to solve. It is particularly suited to public services, complex professional tools and projects where users have practices that are hard to observe from the outside. For incremental improvements on well-understood interfaces, lighter evaluation methods are generally enough.