Preparing Future Designers for their Role in Co-Design: Student Insights on Learning Co-Design

Abstract

The state-of-the-art literature indicates an increasing need for co-design education as it is imperative to equip future designers with the co-designing mindset. This derives from the significance of involving 'people with lived experience' in co-design processes to better meet their needs. However, the traditional design education system seems to include mostly individual designing skills, causing a lack of skills in design students to facilitate the active participation of people in co-design. This paper reports on a case study carried out in a third-year Bachelor industrial design engineering course with design students (n = 32) and design educators (n = 4) to find an effective and efficient way of preparing future designers for their role in co-design and to gain insights into design students' experience with learning about co-design. As an instructional method, a co-design workshop including the game-play, game-modding and game-design approaches is introduced. The obstacles and confusion of the design students regarding co-design and co-design education, which they have documented throughout the year on their personalised logbooks, are explained to eliminate them in the future for smoother incorporation of co-design education into design education curricula. Lastly, for future designers' mindfulness of co-design and their role as facilitators suggestions are provided such as accreditation of curriculum activities regarding co-design education.