This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Co-design projects give stakeholders a seat at the table, including them as members of the design team, but few studies have evaluated whether they feel heard. A participant satisfaction study found that how and when people are engaged, as well as who holds decision-making power, shape meaningful participation.
The study assessed co-design workshops that aimed to improve family planning counseling and follow-up at public health facilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Nairobi, Kenya. It was led by researchers at University of Michigan Engineering, with collaborators from Derz Consulting in Ethiopia and Kenya. The results offer tools for practitioners to monitor participants' satisfaction and use that feedback to create more meaningful and equitable engagement in future global health projects.
The research is published in the journal CoDesign. "If we're asking people to share their time, energy and personal experiences with us in a co-design process, we have a responsibility to understand what that process is actually like on their end. Co-design should be valuable for all those involved and not just useful for the research team," said Julia Kramer, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at U-M and corresponding author of the study.
During structured co-design workshops, contraceptive users, married men and family planning providers worked alongside the researchers to create supportive counseling interventions to help women plan whether to have children, when to have them and how many to have. One team in Ethiopia and another in Kenya met for seven separate workshops facilitated in the local language over a yearlong period. To evaluate co-design participant satisfaction, the research team developed surveys based on prior research and supplemented these with observations and in-depth interviews.
The evaluation focused on three dimensions of engagement satisfaction: whether participants felt valued, what they learned and whether they felt they contributed to the project's progress. "I've been really encouraged by how honest our findings were. Both community member co-designers and facilitators were clear about what worked and what didn't.
That kind of honest reflection is exactly what we need to understand how we can improve our engagements and make them more equitable," said Lauren Wojciechowski, a doctoral student in design science at U-M and lead author of the study. While the surveys were developed for the family planning project, the research team believes they could be adapted to other co-design efforts, as these three dimensions could apply to other social programs, major construction projects and more. Participants generally reported positive experiences with co-design.
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