Select Type of Resources in The Co-Design Journey
Select Level of Co-design Practice
These methods result in design without a current contextual understanding of the community, designing systems that reinforce cultural tropes and knowledge hierarchies, or in short design, for a theoretically imagined community.
The minimum co-design method where community members or individuals are consulted as customers on their needs, aspirations and desires, including working within the existing socio-cultural, environmental, and financial systems of focus communities. Often involves designing for or on behalf of communities.
Level 2 is where the methods of co-design work towards inclusivity, understand FDPs as agents of change through mobilising local resources and existing community-based structures to support HE projects
Engaging in transformational knowledge exchanges that are led by affected and at risk individuals and communities in order to dismantle existing power structures that constrain co-design processes
Select Step in The Co-design Journey
Early Concept
Solution Development
Action and Testing
Engaging with entire systems approaches requires humanitarian practitioners to challenge and rethink how to interact with humanitarian systems that surround them. This outlines what needs to change and how.
Decolonisation reflects a just transition to rebalance power among the various stakeholders in the humanitarian sector. The theme looks at the stages of transformation in power imbalances, decolonising aid and highlights the need for systematic changes in how the humanitarian sector operates.
Formally recognised by the Grand Bargain, localisation engages local and national actors in all phases of humanitarian action. This theme supports localisation processes which include the voices of the forcibly displaced in leading in the sector.
Whilst the idea of replicability (the ability to copy and paste using the same resources) is embedded in many humanitarian organisations, true scalability is often reserved for the private sector - how can the two learn from each other to create more effective and efficient humanitarian programs?
Grounded through the core Humanitarian Principles, this theme looks to understand and explore the humanitarian principles, within the context of “do no harm” and “ethics” based approaches to working with vulnerable groups in order to ultimately connect to the wider topic of energy justice (and just transitions).
The theme of policy addresses the challenges and opportunities of frameworks that address humanitarian issues. This theme cuts across all the co-design levels as it includes participatory approaches, inclusive designs and localisation processes to enable sustainable interventions.
AI can be leveraged to create content to amplify local voices, navigating complex funding mazes, and minimising legal and administration costs that slow action - but it cannot replace human interaction or trusting partnerships.
Capacity building evolves in the co-design spectrum to transform skills and knowledge to foster effective responses for sustainable solutions. It allows humanitarian practitioners to meaningfully engage with communities and provide opportunities to aid transformative solutions.
Inclusion calls for equal participation and representation of vulnerable and marginalised groups despite the differences in ethnicity, gender, disability and identity among others. This theme reflects the importance of inclusive design approaches and the active engagement in creating inclusive policies.
Partnerships, and collaborations between humanitarian organisations, provide the fundamental core of every humanitarian response. This theme tracks the evolution of partnerships from extractive to transformative, shifting decision making power to forcibly displaced groups themselves.