People with disability are often left out at the beginning of the research process when organisations want research done quickly. This reduces the level of power they have as members of the research team. To be effective, people with disability must be in decision-making positions before research proposals are developed. Co-design in research shifts the power balance between the researcher and the researched.
People with disability are expected to be involved as researchers and decision-makers in research projects. But co-design methods require respect for the process from the outset.
Researchers have to navigate tensions inherent within research institutions when involving people with disability from the beginning of the process. Improving the quality of the research is one of the aims of co-designing with people with disability. It also gives an opportunity to employ people who might not otherwise find a job.
A research team led by Flinders University use a case study to show how to engage with prospective co-designers. They looked at the different factors or conditions that enable or constrain co-design work, and how they relate to each other. The funding of commissioned work has an effect on the internal dynamics and relations within the team. They also found that authority and power can shift and change depending on how these components interact.
Clearly there is more to simply gathering a group of people with disability within a research team and thinking co-design will just happen. Factors such as institutional requirements, and authoritarian hierarchies can have a significant impact on co-design processes.
The title of the article is, Shifting power to people with disability in co-designed research.
People with and without disability need to work together to overcome resistance when co-design work is not treated with respect by people or systems.
From the abstract
This paper explores tensions navigated by researchers and project leaders when involving people with disability as experts in co-design and in the core team.
Structural conditions of funding and institutional support were foundational to the co-design. These included accessible practices, core roles for people with disability and resolving ableist conditions.
Power shifts were easily undermined by institutionalised norms that disrespected the co-design contributions. The value of co-designing research was centre to articulating key issues, methodology and analysis.
Also see Building capacity for engaged research.
Co-create and trans-create
How do you co-design with people who have limited communication skills? After all, co-design methods are built on conversations. The first thing then, is to find a way to overcome this significant barrier. This means finding non-verbal methods to find out how they experience the world.
Researchers developed a method called this “trans-create” because it was similar to translating one language to another. The used tangible artifacts rather than words, paper and pens.
Instead of co-designing with children without disabilities for children with disabilities, we tried the opposite. We co-designed with children with disabilities for children without disabilities. We used music, rhythm, lighting, tangible artifacts and new programmable possibilities to facilitate communication and co-creation, as an alternative to verbal language.
Th title of the article is Trans-Create – Co-Design with Persons with Severe Disabilities.
From the abstract
Co-design methods are a challenge with persons with significantly different prerequisites for communication. It’s hard to know if what we design is good for them in the way they themselves define it. We present a new process called “trans-create” based on translating between cultures.
The Mātai Moana project
Community-based projects expand teaching and learning, enabling the experience of practice-based education through the development of participatory projects. The Landscape Architecture programme of Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington (NZ) has developed a methodology that facilitates service learning. It demonstrate adaptability to different types of partners, projects, design objectives and university courses.
The Mātai Moana project demonstrated that design-based partnerships are useful instruments to collectively generate ideas. Students began to develop skills relevant to practice, whilst helping communities understand and improve their conditions. The title of the paper is, The Mātai Moana project: learning collaborative and participatory methods through an inclusive design process.
From the Ground Up: Establishing a Centre for Universal Design in Australia charts the establishment and development of CUDA. This paper was presented at the