The co-design recipe: four essential principles for cooking up meaningful change
My eight-year-old niece recently asked what I do for work. I floundered, as I often do, when trying to explain my practice to anyone outside my niche. She got the idea that I was some sort of teacher for grown-ups. But I didn’t manage to convey what it is that I teach people.
On the same holiday, my extended family struggled to collaborate on meals in a way that made me hangry before we even arrived. In hindsight, I realised that if I’d applied principles from my work to this situation (and put my facilitation hat on), I could have not only helped to coordinate food purchasing and cooking in a way that met everyone’s needs and played to each of our strengths. I could have offered my family an experience of co-design.
In the messy reality of collaborative work, principles serve as our compass. They ground us when we’re navigating complex situations and guide us when we face difficult decisions. Like what to feed nine adults and three children with various dietary requirements and preferences.
Starting with principles isn’t just a theoretical exercise—it’s a practical necessity for meaningful co-design.
To illustrate how these principles work in practice, we’ll use the metaphor of pizza-making throughout this post. Making pizza together offers a tangible example of how co-design principles can shape a collaborative process—from initial concept to delicious outcome. And it might just be something I suggest next time three generations of my family gather!
The foundation of effective co-design
If you’ve had any experience leading it, you know that co-design can be challenging. When we bring diverse people together to tackle complex problems, there will inevitably be tensions, disagreements, and moments of uncertainty.
Without clear principles to guide us, we risk reverting to habitual ways of working that may reinforce existing power dynamics or exclude important perspectives.
Principles help us articulate our values and commitments from the outset. They provide a shared language and reference point for everyone involved, making it easier to have difficult conversations when things don’t go as planned. And when you’re experimenting and innovating with real people, there will inevitably be some surprises along the way!
A distilled set of core principles
There are many sets of co-design principles out there. I’ll admit, I’ve published and promoted slightly different sets before! After years of working with people to build skills in co-design, social innovation and systemic design, this is the set I’ve landed on:
— purpose driven,
— inclusive collaboration,
— sharing power, and
— adaptive learning.
These four principles represent the foundational values across different approaches that share a commitment to actively involving relevant people in designing and developing the services, policies and systems that shape their lives. They capture the essence of what make participatory approaches to design and innovation meaningful and effective, regardless of context or methodology.
Four key principles of co-design
Purpose-driven: What are we trying to achieve? How can we stay focused on what’s most important about this work?
At its heart, co-design aims to create meaningful change. When we’re clear about our purpose, we can make better decisions about where to focus our energy and resources. In places where people keep getting asked to do even more with even less, this is essential.
This isn’t just about setting objectives—it’s about connecting to the deeper ‘why’ that motivates people to participate and contribute.
In pizza terms: Purpose-driven means being clear about why we’re making pizza together in the first place. Are we trying to feed hungry kids? Learn new skills? Test out a new pizza oven? Create a signature dish for a community event? Understanding and agreeing on our shared purpose will guide everything from ingredient selection to cooking method.
Inclusive collaboration: Who needs to be involved? How will we respect different contributions and enable collective action?
Co-design thrives on diversity—of perspectives, experiences, knowledge, methods, and ideas. This principle challenges us to think carefully about who needs to be involved and how we’ll create the conditions for meaningful participation.
Crucially it also takes us beyond consultation—only asking people what they think or want. It moves us into the space of collaboration, where we create things and take action together.
In pizza terms: Inclusive collaboration means considering who should actively take part in our pizza-making process. The nonna with generations of dough-making knowledge, the friend with dietary restrictions, the chef with technical expertise, and the hungry teens who’ll be eating most of it, all bring valuable perspectives. We create ways for everyone to contribute meaningfully—perhaps one person shapes the dough, a couple of others select toppings, while someone else monitors the oven temperature.
Sharing power: Whose voices and ideas most need to be uplifted? What decisions can we make together? How else might we share responsibilities and resources?
Power imbalances exist everywhere. In my family, like any group, there are differences in terms of age, gender, education, expertise, health, communication skills, and so on. Co-design asks us to acknowledge these imbalances and actively work to address them. This isn’t about tokenistic gestures; it’s about fundamentally rethinking how decisions are made and who gets to make them.
In pizza terms: Sharing power in our pizza-making means ensuring everyone has a genuine say in important decisions. Perhaps the kids—who typically have less decision-making power—get to choose the toppings today. Maybe we rotate who leads different aspects of the process. We might create a decision-making framework where everyone gets an equal vote on the final recipe, regardless of their cooking experience or status in the household.
Adaptive learning: When and how will we test, evaluate and iterate our activities and outputs? How (and with whom) might we share what we’re learning?
Co-design is inherently experimental. We’re trying things, learning from them, and adapting as we go. This principle reminds us to build in opportunities for reflection and adaptation throughout the process, not just at the end.
In pizza terms: Adaptive learning means we might taste-test various topping combinations and adjust based on feedback, rather than preparing them all at the start. After the meal, we reflect together on what worked well and what we’d change next time. We could even document our learning in a shared recipe book that evolves with each pizza-making experience.
Our co-design pizza party: bringing it all together
Imagine a community pizza-making event that embodies all these principles.
We begin with a clear purpose—creating a menu of pizzas for a community fundraiser that celebrates local ingredients and cultural diversity (purpose-driven). We invite a diverse group of participants, including local farmers, professional chefs, community elders with traditional recipes, and young people who will help run the event, making sure everyone can participate by addressing language barriers, recognising people’s time, and accommodating different abilities (inclusive collaboration).
Decision-making authority is distributed—community members co-create then vote on which recipes to feature, young leaders determine pricing, and farmers advise on seasonal ingredients (sharing power). Throughout the process, we test recipes with small groups, gather feedback, and adjust—documenting what we learn in a community cookbook that will be shared after the event (adaptive learning).
The result isn’t just delicious pizza—it’s stronger community relationships, shared ownership of the event, and collective learning that can be applied to future initiatives.
Putting principles into practice
These principles aren’t abstract concepts—they’re practical guides for action.
Our Principles of Co-Design canvas provides a tool for applying these principles to your specific context. Use it to prompt reflection and discussion with your team and community members as you plan and implement your co-design process.
There are many different ways to bring these principles to life in your work. The specific methods, tools and techniques you choose will depend on your context, the people involved, and the resources available to you. If you’re fairly new to co-design and systems innovation approaches, structured learning opportunities can provide a valuable foundation. Our Principles into Practice training program offers a supportive environment to build your toolkit and confidence in applying these principles across diverse contexts.
By starting with principles, you create a stronger foundation for your co-design work. You establish shared expectations about how you’ll work together, make decisions, and navigate challenges. Most importantly, you increase the likelihood that your co-design process will lead to meaningful, equitable, and sustainable outcomes.
I encourage you to use these principles as starting points and adapt them to your own context. Even better: co-create your own set of principles! Co-design is a journey of continuous learning. Embrace it with openness, curiosity, and a commitment to doing things differently.
Free resource
Use the Principles of Co-Design canvas to prompt reflection and discussion as you plan and implement your co-design process.
