How Might We Evaluate Co-Design Capabilities and Conditions?
Channel: Australian Evaluation Society
Date: 2022-12-01

Throughout the private, public and community sectors, people are increasingly adopting human-centred design. Many individuals and organisations are going further and trying to embed co-design into their ways of working. But how do we know if these efforts are effective or worthwhile? Evaluating the conditions and capabilities for co-design is challenging, especially when shared definitions are lacking and examples of genuine power-sharing for creative problem-solving are hard to come by.

In this interactive seminar, Emma Blomkamp will share her learnings from leading, researching and evaluating co-design capability building initiatives in the public and not-for-profit sectors in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Emma will invite attendees to test a new co-design maturity model that integrates concepts from her previous work and builds on frameworks from other leading practitioners of design and innovation. 

Dr Emma Blomkamp is a Co-Design Coach who supports people to use creative and participatory ways to improve the outcomes of policies, services and programs. Founder and Convenor of the Co-Design Community of Practice (CoDesignCo), she is also an Honorary Fellow at The University of Melbourne. After working in a variety of roles in the cultural and educational sectors, Emma has now been leading, researching and evaluating participatory design and social innovation with public purpose organisations for nearly a decade.

Born and raised in Aotearoa, with experience teaching in New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia and France, Emma lives on Wurundjeri Country in Melbourne (Australia). She has a PhD in community wellbeing and cultural policy evaluation, and continues to publish and present internationally on public innovation and systemic design.