A participatory design approach that actively involves users, stakeholders, or community members in generating and evaluating solutions rather than positioning them solely as research subjects. Co-creation sessions include collaborative sketching, workshops, or iterative critique, and are particularly valuable for products serving communities with domain expertise the design team lacks.
Common contexts
- Running a co-design workshop with nurses to map a clinical documentation workflow before wireframing
- Inviting power users to a sketching session to generate concepts for a new reporting feature
- Facilitating a stakeholder co-creation session to define success criteria before a platform redesign
Use when
Use co-creation when the domain expertise required to design a good solution lives primarily with users, not the design team — particularly for professional tools, healthcare, education, or community platforms. It shortens the feedback loop dramatically and builds buy-in from the people most affected by design decisions.
Avoid when
Co-creation is not a replacement for design expertise — if the session devolves into users prescribing specific UI solutions, you'll end up building a feature-by-committee product that satisfies no one. The designer's role is to shape the conversation, not simply execute whatever participants sketch.
The most honest thing that happens in a co-creation session isn't the ideas people generate — it's watching what they struggle to express, because that gap between intent and articulation is exactly where the design problem lives.
Real-world examples
- LEGO's Ideas platform invites fans to submit product concepts; submissions that reach 10,000 votes are reviewed for potential production, making customers co-creators of the product line.
- Threadless built its entire business model on community co-creation: designers submit t-shirt artwork, the community votes, and winning designs are manufactured and sold.
- Microsoft's Inclusive Design toolkit was developed through co-creation workshops with people with disabilities, ensuring that accessibility features addressed real-world needs.