Designing together: reflections on co-design in complex settings

Co-design is increasingly used to tackle complex challenges—but what does it look like in practice? Drawing on work across multi-stakeholder initiatives in areas including land use, climate adaptation, and public health, this post explores six elements that help shape grounded, inclusive, and adaptive co-design.

Over recent years, I’ve supported and observed design processes addressing complex issues. These have involved diverse participants—communities, researchers, policy actors, and industry bodies—and typically required not just technical solutions but new ways of working together.

Co-design responds well to these challenges, particularly when approached not as a toolkit, but as a collective way of navigating complexity.  This view aligns with broader explorations of co-design, such as Cat Drew’s back story to the Systemic Design Framework development, Emma Blomkamp’s blog post Shades of co-design, and Susanne Moser’s paper on co-design on transformative practice. Each of these highlights that co-design is not a fixed model, but a practice that takes different forms depending on context.

What follows isn’t a how-to guide, but a reflection on patterns I’ve seen emerge through practice, especially in settings where multiple perspectives matter. This post also complements the more detailed resource pages on systemic co-design, design thinking, and multi-stakeholder-processes available through the Learning for Sustainability site.

1. Starting with shared grounding

Creating early alignment through shared values, context, and purpose

In many collaborative projects, there’s a tendency to begin by defining tasks–what needs doing, by whom, and when. But in complex settings, where multiple perspectives and values come into play, it’s often more important to begin with relationships. It helps to understand where people are coming from, what matters and how they see the purpose. Co-design, in these contexts, depends on a shared orientation before it can support meaningful action.

This grounding isn’t about gaining full agreement but about creating enough shared direction to move forward. It could involve exploring aspirations, reflecting on lived experience, or simply taking time to talk and listen. This emphasis on grounding is echoed in the Just Transitions Guide, which shows how processes gain strength when people first build relationships and connect around shared context and intent.

In practice, it might look like a series of small conversations rather than a single kick-off workshop. Small groups might share personal or organisational histories, or map what success could look like. It’s about creating space for people to show up as themselves—not just as institutional representatives.

2. Framing the issue together

Letting the challenge emerge through shared understanding

With a shared grounding established, the next step is to frame the issue, allowing diverse perspectives to reshape the problem space. In many projects, the problem is defined from the start–often by funders, researchers, or policy priorities. While others may be consulted, the overall framing tends to remain fixed. In co-design, there’s a different orientation. Rather than starting with a predefined issue and working towards a solution, co-design allows the problem itself to be reshaped as different perspectives come into play.

This doesn’t mean beginning with a blank slate. Most co-design processes still have parameters—a general focus, some constraints, and a sense of urgency. But they treat the problem space as something to explore, not simply solve. The goal is to understand not just what the issue is, but why it matters, who it affects, and how it is experienced across contexts.

This could involve mapping the system together, surfacing different narratives, or exploring where people see tensions or opportunities. Sometimes what looks like a technical problem to one group is a values-based concern for another–or a mix of issues collapsed into one. Shaping the problem together can feel uncertain, but it creates a grounded and inclusive starting point—one that reflects lived experience and opens a wider range of responses.

This kind of framing work relies on thoughtful facilitation. As discussed in this earlier LfS post on co-design and facilitation, it’s not just about keeping the process moving—it’s about helping participants reflect together, question assumptions, and navigate complexity with care.

3. Creating space for contribution

Designing for participation that is inclusive, thoughtful, and power-aware

Co-design is often described as participatory—but participation alone doesn’t ensure meaningful contribution. It requires being intentional about how people are invited in, how input is valued, and how decisions are shaped.

It’s not just about getting the “right mix” of stakeholders in the room. It’s about group dynamics—who speaks first, whose perspectives carry weight, and whether people feel safe to raise disagreement or uncertainty. As discussed in the previously mentioned  co-design and facilitation post, facilitation plays a crucial role—not just in guiding process, but in noticing who’s participating, how, and who may need support.

Sometimes contribution is shaped by formality—who takes notes or summarises discussion. Sometimes it’s about pace: moving too fast can silence voices or flatten ideas that need more time to form. Addressing this could involve:

• Using varied methods—small groups, storytelling, drawing—to support different forms of expression.
• Revisiting earlier conversations so ideas can evolve.
• Being transparent about how decisions are made and how different kinds of knowledge are recognised.

As Blomkamp notes in her blog Shades of co-design, co-design takes many forms. What matters is whether people feel their contributions are meaningful, respected, and able to shape outcomes.

This also connects with wider ethical considerations. Co-design often involves emergent goals and evolving relationships—challenging the linear assumptions of conventional research and policy. As Moser points out, it can reshape not only the outcomes of a project, but also the questions we ask, the relationships we build, and the kinds of change we aim to support. These shifts raise important ethical questions—particularly around consent, power, and institutional oversight—which are increasingly being recognised by ethics committees and researchers alike (Goodyear-Smith et al., 2015).

4. Using tools to support shared inquiry

Employing tools that help people explore, reflect, and co-create meaning

Tools can help participants explore issues and reflect together. They’re often the most visible part of a design process—post-its, diagrams, whiteboards, canvases. But in co-design, they’re not just for collecting input. At their best, tools help people see systems differently, make thinking visible, and build shared understanding.

Their value lies in how they’re used. A simple matrix can surface values or tensions. A visual scenario might combine technical data with lived experience. A rubric or set of questions can help weigh trade-offs that reflect both cultural and practical concerns.

Effective tools are transparent, flexible, and facilitative—used to prompt inquiry, not replace it.

• Transparent – People know what the tool is for, and how it fits within the wider process.
• Flexible – Tools are adapted to suit the group, not the other way around.
• Facilitative – They prompt dialogue and reflection, not just capture answers.

Tools also need to be introduced with care. A visual dashboard may engage some but overwhelm others. A model might clarify for some and obscure for others. As Cat Drew’s Medium post  notes, tools work best when chosen with people and systems in mind—not applied as a one-size-fits-all solution.

This idea is also explored in another recent LfS post on systems design, which highlights how tools can support collaboration in complexity. Systems thinking tools (like mapping, feedback diagrams, or stakeholder analysis), facilitation strategies, and co-design approaches such as Theory of Change or scenario planning all help teams make complexity visible, include diverse voices, and develop solutions that remain responsive over time.

5. Navigating difference

Holding space for multiple perspectives, knowledge systems, and priorities

Complex projects often bring together people with different starting points—worldviews, roles, accountabilities, and measures of success. Co-design doesn’t try to smooth out these differences or merge them into a single voice. Instead, it keeps them visible and works across them with care.

This is also where co-design can be most challenging. Tensions can emerge, and processes may slow down. But it’s often where the greatest value lies. When people stay in dialogue across their differences—whether cultural, technical, institutional, or experiential—new insights can emerge.

Working with difference requires deliberate process design. That might mean:

• Creating space for different forms of evidence and expression–numbers, stories, images, scenarios.
• Avoiding premature convergence–letting multiple interpretations sit side by side for a while.
• Encouraging people to listen not just for agreement, but for understanding.

It also means noticing the invisible boundaries. In hybrid settings—where some are online and others in the room—differences in voice and presence can be magnified. Similarly, when community members are invited to “co-design” without clarity on scope or influence, trust can erode quickly.

Navigating difference doesn’t mean forcing consensus. It’s about making better decisions amid complexity—not resolving it.

This aspect of co-design reflects what social learning supports: collective sense-making in uncertain, shifting environments. It calls for patience, humility, and a willingness to sit with discomfort—not as failure, but as part of the practice. For those working in particularly contested or sensitive settings, the LfS conflict management resource page provides additional tools and guidance for navigating disagreement constructively and supporting trust-building through dialogue.

6. Designing with the future in mind

Embedding adaptability, learning, and influence from the outset

While many initiatives focus on near-term goals—a framework to develop, a tool to test, a policy to inform—their deeper value often lies in what continues beyond formal outputs: relationships, shared capabilities, and ways of working that persist and grow.

Designing with the future in mind means holding more than one scale in view. It involves supporting groups to build capability—not just for the task at hand, but for navigating what comes next. It also asks us to consider how today’s work aligns with wider systems—social, ecological, and intergenerational. A co-developed tool might not be adopted as-is, but the thinking behind it may shape future practice. A local initiative might inspire wider change through adaptation.

Co-design often lays the foundations for change to grow beyond the initial setting. For a short reflection on how ideas can travel with integrity across contexts, see rethinking scaling in complex settings.

This orientation also invites more openness about what success looks like. In complex settings, impacts often unfold gradually, indirectly, and through relationships. Measuring outcomes solely in terms of uptake or delivery can obscure what matters most: whether people are more able to collaborate, reflect, and respond to change in ways that respect people, place, and planet.

Concluding reflection

Co-design offers a way of working that matches the complexity of the challenges we face. It draws together social learning, systems thinking, and participatory design—not as fixed frameworks, but as practical orientations. These reflections highlight the value of shared grounding, slowing down to understand the problem, supporting meaningful contribution, and the learning that good tools and facilitation can enable.

Co-design isn’t just about outcomes—it’s about creating the conditions for people to learn, collaborate, and adapt together. As a transformative process, it reshapes the questions we ask, the relationships we form, and the kinds of change that become possible. At its best, co-design invites us to reimagine not only systems and outcomes, but also ourselves. It reminds us that in complex settings, we move forward in steps—through reflection, adaptive management, and shared intent.

This post also sits within a broader reflection, as Learning for Sustainability marks 20 years online in 2025. Many of the ideas explored here have been shaped by that ongoing work—supporting participatory processes, systems thinking, and collaborative practice across diverse settings.

It’s intended as a high-level reflection on patterns that often surface in co-design practice—particularly in complex, multi-stakeholder settings. For those looking to explore specific tools, frameworks, or examples, the site also includes more detailed resources on systemic co-design, design thinking, and multi-stakeholder-processes. These pages offer practical guidance for adapting co-design approaches to different contexts.

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[* Photo: Frans van Heerden | Pexels ]