Co-creation in Design Management and Product Development

Co-creation in Design Management and Product Development

The Brief

In our Horizon2020 MATUROLIFE project, we aim to put creative and artistic design at the heart of the innovation journey, to develop fashionable smart solutions (footwear, sofa, and clothing) for older people. In this project, the design is coupled with advanced innovative materials which provided aesthetic, high-value, and functional products for Assistive Technology (AT). Assistive Technology product's purpose is to increase the quality of life, well-being, and independence for older people.

This ambitious project brings together 20 partners: 11 SMEs from 9 EU countries to work for 36-month on a 6-million-euro project. Thru SMEs and scientists working on cutting-edge advances in electrochemistry and nanotechnology provided us with a materials supply chain. This enables us to have an innovative, highly conductive, multifunctional, smart textile to produce novel AT prototypes.

In this highly complex project, the design process becomes quite complex. In addition to 20 business partners and advisory board members, older people became a part of the design process as end-user. To manage co-creation with a high amount of diverse members is an important, complex problem to solve on its own as the success of the project depends on collaboration.

The Approach

Co-creation is a methodology to bring multiple stakeholders together to create and design a product, service, concept, or strategy together, to have a more holistic approach to the project.

We considered co-creation in general as a tool to democratize the process, build and transfer the know-how along with the project. Therefore, it was used as a tool in three different contexts:

1- CO-CREATION WITH END-USERS

The main target of the project was to use the co-creation methodology in the design process to involve older people as end-user to design smart products. This is the most common cause of co-creation methodology.

In the MATUROLIFE case, the key challenges were as follows:

1. How to design tools and iterate them?
2. How to bring older people to the project in nine countries in seven different languages?
3. How to involve older people and record the sessions and process the data by the partners in the EU and outside the EU like Turkey. GDPR data protection rules were newly introduced in Europe.

Here is how we address these problems:

1. We have designed canvases in two languages to guide the conversations in each country with the aims of:
a. Understanding older people’s definition of independence
b. Which products do they prefer and what type of modification they want to make to those products
When we design the tools (canvases) we put extra attention to keep the language and logic as simple as possible for the participants.

We have iterated the tools in between the workshops.
1. Organization of the workshops was the most challenging part of the workshop as it required a series of physical operations such as inviting older people, carrying workshop materials, renting the venue, etc.
With the help of our project partners, older people were invited to the local workshops.

1. When we start executing the design tasks, GDPR rules were newly introduced

2. We have had experience with running workshops in several languages earlier. Therefore, we were familiar with the problem. We ask each local partner in nine countries to help us translate the documents and workshop canvases in advance. They also helped us to facilitate the workshops. This way we didn’t have to involve 3rd parties and create extra complexity in data protection.

2- CO-CREATION for KNOW-HOW TRANSFERING

MATUROLIFE consortium has 20 partners coming from many diverse backgrounds. Only in the design function, we managed the teams in four countries who have a different understanding of design. The gap between design and tech teams was even bigger.

Therefore, we designed two internal co-creation workshops to make sure that the technology department is a part of the design process before the handover of the product's concepts.

In these workshops, we used service design blueprints as a tool to base the conversation on.
The service design blueprints were quite instrumental to lead the conversations.

3- CO-CREATION for ALIGNING the VISION

In multi-country and multi-diverse teams, one of the main challenges is to create a common language and vision. In our internal co-creation workshops, we also focused on building the common language and vision together with partners. This was a critical acceleration to the execution of the project.

The Result

Co-creation can be a powerful methodology if the tools are designed well.
In the MATUROLIFE case, it worked effectively to involve older people in the design process.
However for the other contexts, without the service design blueprint tool, it would be as effective as it is in the case for end-users.

Co-creation workshops were held in person due to the older people’s involvement, but it is also possible to run these workshops in the digital space which we experienced at later stages of MATUROLIFE during the pandemic.