Designers engaged in co-design deliberately collaborate with non-designers, including people with lived experience of a social challenge and practitioners and researchers who contribute specialised knowledge in the relevant fields. Within these collaborations, designers typically possess the most experience and expertise in designing and facilitating the design process itself. Consequently, they often take a leading role in structuring and guiding co-design activities, while simultaneously helping participants develop familiarity with design methods, skills, and mindsets. This dual role, as both facilitator and educator, can create tensions with professional practitioners and researchers, whose established disciplinary practices may not always align with the collaborative ways of working promoted in co-design.
