
Use the power of collaboration to develop design solutions with your team members, stakeholders and end-users and learn to devise and facilitate co-design workshops to transform your own organisation.

Whether you're looking to develop a culture of collaboration in your organisation, create more insightful products and services, or bring change through social innovation in the public sector, this course will help you to create effective responses that place your audiences at the heart of your decision-making.
Collaborative thinking is key to solving big problems. Working in teams, you will gain a holistic view of co-design by experiencing the ins and outs of effective design collaboration, as well as learning how to devise and facilitate successful co-design workshops within your own company or organisation.
Taught by Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad from the RCA’s MA Design Products, this engaging course combines social research, hands-on making, guest lectures, design sprints and games to equip you with the tools and processes for impactful design through collaboration with stakeholders and end-users.
About the course
Course structure
- Keynote lectures by Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad and invited guests
- A set of playful co-ideation and co-creation exercises
- Design sprints, teamwork and project management
- Performative and scenario-based final presentations in front of a panel of experts
Tried and tested methods and tools from workshops delivered for City of Westminster Council, the V&A, Arts Catalyst and more.
Personal and organisational benefits
- Gain a thorough understanding of co-design methods and tools for creative collaboration across a range of business and organisational challenges.
- Tap into the creativity and experience of colleagues, end-users and stakeholders.
- Enhance team building and a culture of creativity within your organisation.
- Develop playful and engaging approaches to collective problem finding and solving.
- Apply effective and scalable workshop facilitation methods for small and large groups of participants.
- Develop an empathic understanding of users and stakeholders.
- Gain experience in critical, creative and insightful thinking.
- A certificate of attendance.
What will you learn?
By the end of this course you will have learnt to:
- apply a co-design approach to create design insights and innovation
- employ playful approaches to make design accessible to a range of collaborators
- explore real-world applications of co-design and how it is transforming organisations, studios and the public sector
- develop co-design workshop facilitation methods to actively engage participants within your organisation, studio or for personal development
- engage in interdisciplinary research and ideation and network with peers from different backgrounds
- a process-driven approach including ethnography, social engagement, co-creation and prototyping.
How will you learn?
- Online – in a workshop that combines hands-on making with guest lectures, design sprints, games.
- Participants are expected to work in small groups where they will experience the co-design process from both the perspective of facilitator and end-user.
- Participants will additionally have an opportunity to schedule a post-masterclass one-to-one session with the course leader.
Online delivery
The course is organised in synchronous sessions in a live virtual environment that combines various digital platforms and tools.
Zoom
Using the videoconferencing service Zoom, the RCA's esteemed academics and facilitators deliver a mix of:
- live lectures
- case studies
- guided assessments
- presentations
Participants interact with the faculty and peers in breakout rooms in real time.
Miro
Participants engage in cross-functional team work with the use of visual collaboration tools.
Through the online whiteboard platform Miro, participants get to:
- interact with various formats and templates
- plan and brainstorm ideas
- create processes and workshop activities in the digital workspace.
Moodle
The College's learning platform Moodle is personalised according to the course's requirements to provide participants with a secure integrated system where they can access the course content.
The hub hosts a plethora of useful resources to enable the learning experience, including comprehensive timetables, pre-reading materials, course slides, curated videos, tutorials and session recordings.
Slack
Participants stay connected and communicate via the channel-based messaging platform Slack throughout the whole duration of the course.
In this space, the academics, facilitators and delegates get to network, plan the course activities, share documents and files during the live sessions or offline.
Course outcomes
Participants will walk away with:
- new skills and tools to help them become better co-designers and co-design facilitators
- know-how and confidence to lead collaborators towards design innovation
- multiple perspectives on co-design including a clear understanding of leading and participating in co-design
- new playful approaches to creativity that make design and research more accessible and engaging.
Disclaimer: The information given is accurate at the time of publication, however, the RCA reserves the right to amend the described course as circumstances dictate.
Who should attend?
- Charities, local authorities, social enterprises, museums and galleries
- Community organisers
- In-house R&D
- Civil servants
- Product designers
- Service designers
- Design researchers
- Masters students
If you have already attended our short courses in Design Thinking, Service Design or Creative Leadership, this new course will compliment your knowledge.
Gallery
Contact us
Get in touch with Jo Chounta if you'd like to find out more about this or any of our other short courses.
[email protected]
