By Dr Emma Blomkamp

When I started out working in social innovation – my first immersion into designerly practice about a decade ago – I was a huge fan of field guides and toolkits. I loved perusing the contents of guides from design firms and pracademics. I also enjoyed being exposed to, and experimenting in, different kinds of practice through events like the Global Service Jam.

Design-based approaches offered an exciting range of methods for addressing complex issues. Coming out of a theory-heavy PhD, I felt inspired and empowered by these tools and techniques.

Though I often didn’t know which ones to use in my work, or how participants might respond when I followed a brief, generic step-by-step guide I’d found online. I began to wonder about the philosophy or evidence, if any, on which these approaches were based.

I remember being impressed by experienced practitioners like Penny Hagen and Lee Ryan who drew on a huge grab bag of tools and techniques. I learned a lot from working alongside, and participating in events run by, these seasoned facilitators of design for social innovation.

In my current work as a Co-Design Coach, I often fill a gap for those people who don’t have the luxury of a senior colleague or mentor modelling how to expertly select and adapt methods to achieve a specific purpose and suit a particular audience.

Too often I see people choosing a tool (for example, journey mapping) or an approach such as a co-design workshop before they are clear on their objectives or ideal participant mix.

With designers’ penchant for tactile practice and tangible outcomes, it’s probably no surprise that we’ve produced a plethora of toolkits. These kits offer what Lucy Kimbell describes as a ‘materialised way to engage people in doing and thinking differently’.

Toolkits represent a democratisation and expansion of design, putting designerly tools and methods in the hands of non-designers. They are obvious signs of the spread of design thinking in both commercial and social contexts.

As Shannon Mattern writes: ‘A kit isn’t just a box of supplies; it’s a judiciously chosen collection of tools and materials designed to script a particular process, aimed to serve a particular purpose (or purposes, plural), and to do so with minimal waste and frustration.’

My love-hate relationship with toolkits, the double diamond, and other stage-based models of design thinking, is not unique. There are plenty of posts about the limitations of these standardised, simplified models of industry.

Yet I’ve softened my disdain in recent years. I’ve witnessed a wide range of people learning for the first time about co-design and related approaches. I’ve begun to appreciate the benefit of simple diagrams and tools to introduce complex concepts and complicated processes to people who are new to the field.

I’ve seen what happens when you avoid using standardised models. Many people grasp the principles and mindsets of co-design without much trouble, but they can struggle to understand what’s unique about this practice and process without neat communication devices.

Just as a less experienced cook will follow a recipe in the kitchen, it can take lots of time to develop a practice where you are confident and capable of improvising with different ingredients. When starting out in a people-centred approach to design, it can help to follow a step-by-step guide, both for the overarching process and for specific methods and tools along the way.

This has implications for how we learn and teach co-design. I’ve made the mistake, for instance, of offering a strategy-based mode of coaching to clients, before embedding rule-based methods through structured training or a more strongly situation-based model of project mentoring.

Through this experience, along with insights from research, including (perhaps ironically) via an innovation learning ‘playbook’, I developed a co-design maturity model to identify the different levels of knowledge and skills that a practitioner gains over time.

I’ve been using this model to help identify individual abilities and organisational conditions for co-design. This is especially useful for determining the best approach to build capabilities and meet goals.

A detailed assessment also highlights skills gaps and organisational blindspots, particularly around the conditions that need to be in place in order to actually carry out co-design.

Not everyone will proceed up these steps in a linear or sequential fashion, but this model highlights the typical journey: from ‘exploring’ what co-design is, with curiosity, to enabling co-design to ‘flourish’ by evolving the practice and supporting others to build their capabilities and conditions.

One person who tested the capability assessment noted, “it’s particularly helpful for those who may not have a deep knowledge or background in co-design and can come to this practice knowing it’s okay to be at the beginning and exploring.”

A key benefit of using this model is an increased awareness around cultivating the conditions of co-design. You might see the model and associated activities as yet another ‘tool’ in this artefact-obsessed field. Yet I hope it supports people who are interested in understanding and growing their maturity in co-design.

As our field matures, more of us realise that it’s about so much more than picking up tools. Again and again, experienced practitioners remind us to focus on creating conditions and nurturing relationships.

Dr Emma Blomkamp is a Co-Design Coach, Convenor and Learning Facilitator. She supports people taking creative and participatory approaches to designing and delivering public policy and human services*.