 Shani, I need to all the AES design and evaluation learning sprint team for setting this up. It is a great honor to have so many people tuning in to hear about how we might evaluate co-design capabilities and conditions. So I am located on the unceded territory of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and would like to pay my respects to the elders and ancestors who have cared for this country for thousands and thousands of years. I would also like to acknowledge the iwi of Te Tai Tokoro in Tamaki Makaurau in Aotearoa, New Zealand, from where I hail. I am really fortunate to be from a very beautiful part of the world and also to be heading back to Aotearoa tomorrow for a couple of months. So if I seemed a bit excited, that might also be one of the reasons why. As Shani said, my name is Emma Blomkamp. My pronouns are she, her, I work mainly independently, supporting people to build their capability in co-design. I deliver training, coaching, and mentoring programs. I'm an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne and this year I founded a community of practice called Co-design Co. So you can find me online in a few places. I am still on Twitter. I think there's a few people still left there and definitely invite you to talk and share there. So today I will give a bit more of an introduction to myself shortly to give you a bit of context for where some of the ideas that I will be sharing have come from. I'm also really keen to hear who's here and so we'll give you a chance to share a few details about yourself via the poll function in Zoom so I can understand who I'm speaking with a bit and that will help me decide what and how to share some things I've learned about evaluating design capability. I've been developing a maturity model recently that it aims to assess the capabilities and conditions for co-design at a range of levels and you're going to get a sneak peek at it. I've shared it a couple of times with people this year but it's not publicly available yet as I'm still finessing it. So today's a really great chance for you to test it out and even offer some feedback on it as well. So you'll get the chance to do your own assessment of your co-design capabilities and then you are welcome to share some thoughts and I'll let you know later when we get to that how you can do it. So first of all a little bit about my journey into design and evaluation. I thought I was a pretty rare butterfly at one point combining these interests but just look at the turnout today and all of the events that are happening with this official interest group and can see that there's a lot of folks who see connections between design and evaluation. So I'm going to kind of skip the first 30 years of my life and just start with when I was doing a PhD on community well-being and local cultural policy and in that research I really focused on local government's role in promoting community well-being understood in quite a holistic way as social, environmental and economic and cultural well-being and I was particularly interested in cultural well-being the slippery concept of what the arts and culture programs and local government are supposed to contribute to and how on earth you might know if a local government is making a difference in relation to cultural well-being. I never set out to explore evaluation explicitly but naturally with that research interest evaluation became one of the things I dove deep into. I found in particular two types of evaluative practices going on in these contexts. Evaluation for the legitimation which was especially about accountability and advocacy and evaluation for learning which would be more about informing decisions and improvements. So obviously there's overlap between these two types but I found it interesting that there were quite different reasons and methods sometimes depending what kind of rationale you had for evaluation but I also found that in their everyday practice local cultural policy workers relied on much less formal modes of knowledge. They really prioritized interpersonal feedback and local knowledge and there was a tension between the reliance on objective numbers and bureaucratic language and that process and outcomes of cultural policy and how to communicate them in meaningful ways. So I wasn't into design at this point I was much more interested in evaluation but shortly found myself working in a small social innovation agency in Auckland New Zealand where I learned on the job about co-design and co-design for social innovation in particular and so I was really fortunate to learn from some excellent mentors and alongside some wonderful colleagues and with some great communities in Auckland. I came back to Australia in 2016 so my PhD was jointly between Melbourne and Auckland universities and then I came back to take a role with the Policy Lab which at the time was a really new research unit at the University of Melbourne and I was able to bring together my research interests and practical applied work to geek out about co-design for public policy try and explore what this emerging practice was and in particular look at how people were trying to build design capability in the public sector. So what I'll be showing today in particular draws on a couple of research case studies I did at the time. One was looking at what a governmental organisation was doing in using a design-led approach to policy development for the very first time and another was an evaluation that I led of a capability building program for people in an Australian Government Department who were learning co-design so I'll be sharing some insights soon and those are some key sources. After my role with the University of Melbourne I found myself in a role with Paper Giant a strategic design consultancy in Melbourne where I was the co-design and evaluation lead and once again at the time I was like thought this was pretty new to be bringing these two practices together but as we can see there's lots of people now who see the connections between them especially with you know evaluation practices like developmental evaluation and principles based evaluation. So an example I would often be working quite separately there'd be projects where I was leading co-design or projects where I was leading evaluation but there was one amazing project where they all came together the supporting justice project there's heaps of info online about that so you can look look into that if you're interested where we led co-design for systems change and had a really strong evaluation component throughout it so that's also been a key project in informing my knowledge of these practices. As I mentioned before these days I mainly work independently I have a few training programs and this year launched this community of practice co-design co and want to acknowledge that I ran a jam session with co-design co members a month or two ago and got some really useful feedback on the maturity model I'll be presenting. I would also like to acknowledge that I am standing on the shoulders of many peers and mentors and organizations who've done great work in this space so the maturity model I've developed is not entirely my own ideas but it's bringing together work from lots of different people who've done fantastic work in this space and building on my mix of research evaluation and applied you know experience working in this space to bring it all together so that's a little bit about me and what's brought me to this point today to be talking to you about evaluating capabilities and conditions for co-design I am super keen to know a little bit about who I'm talking to and I totally appreciate in a session like this that you might have your video off but it would be really nice if I'm not just speaking to to blackness and get to know a little bit about you so I've got a couple of poll questions that I am launching in case you're on some kind of device where the polls don't show up please just write your responses in the chat so the first question is about your location where are you based I want to test my assumption here that we're mainly Australians who've signed up to the Australian evaluation society event I suspect there might be a few people from New Zealand and I'm curious whether if there's anyone else because I might need to explain my cultural context a little bit more as I go if so so I can see 90% of people have participated in this poll that's probably everyone who can see it and I can confirm that my assumption was indeed correct we are 98% Australians or people based in Australia and one person has identified as they're from Aotearoa Kia ora sorry I thought I was sharing the results but there they are you can see them now so that's my first question my second question is let me see how to get to the next poll is who are you what kind of role would you describe that you have are you a designer are you an evaluator do you describe yourself as both or are you neither of these things if you're neither of these things would you mind writing your role or what kind of work you do in the chat just so I can understand how to relate what I'm sharing to you and see how much pre-existing knowledge I might presume Jethro I know don't you hate it when someone asks you to put yourself in a box of course you're welcome to interpret this as broadly as you like what do I mean by designer well I am asking if you see yourself as a designer so that's absolutely how you would interpret it there are many kinds of design out there and we will be talking about some shortly and you'll see that I understand design in quite a broad way so obviously there's some people who aren't necessarily that but are a project coordinator in health research or a PhD researcher people who do policy and research health planning yeah so people a couple of the comments saying people you know do support evaluation practice but are not necessarily an evaluator but definitely people I think what I'm hearing is people who do or support research and evaluation if you're not so what we can see is probably not surprisingly again given who's organized this event we are predominantly evaluators but 22 percent of you identify as both a designer and evaluator I am not alone I have to say I've never actually identified as an evaluator either I've done a bit of evaluation work over the years but I am with with those of you who struggle to put yourself in that box okay final question is however you would describe your current professional discipline you don't have to put it into that one of those narrow categories I just shared but how did you learn your current profession or discipline so there's a few options this time curious when we're talking about capability building if we actually have a bit of a self-reflection to think about in the job you're in right now how did you learn how to do it I'll just give you a chance to respond to that or once again if you can't see the poll you're welcome to write in the chat 84 participation so far I'll wait until we've got 90 at least and then we'll end that poll in just a sec okay I think that's stopping so mostly probably a mix of these things which is not surprising but 41 percent have primarily learned on the job and only 13 percent primarily at university or tertiary education so mainly a mix of the above but interesting to see you know some of the differences and I think that's going to be relevant when we are thinking about building capability so I'd like to talk about a few things that I've learned over the years around evaluating design capability the first is the importance in discerning between different levels of capability design and change I've borrowed this diagram from from Nesta's fantastic playbook of innovation learning that I highly recommend if you're interested in this kind of thing um but you know the key idea here is that what you know an individual might have a range of capabilities attitudes aptitudes you might be an awesome designer but are you working in a team organization and system that enables you to apply those things and that's definitely one of the things I've seen is a particular frustration for people who are interested in co-design and working in conditions such as siloed hierarchical organizations some of you may you know have an idea of what I'm talking about here that don't necessarily support collaboration and creativity so I think when we're talking about capability and conditions it's really important to be clear on what level we're talking about what do I mean when I talk about design I mean all of these things so another way to think about different levels is the different orders of design this idea is originally from Richard Buchanan and if you are familiar with systems or systemic design this won't be new to you but recognizing that not everyone here is a designer I will explain this one um so you know Buchanan pointed out and this this idea has been much used since then um that design orders can be described going from kind of the concrete and specific order of graphic design where you are working with signs symbols print communication and I think often when people think about a designer this is the kind of designer that comes to mind or maybe they're thinking about a person who designs furniture or products and that's industrial design the second order of design design has been increasingly moving into other spaces over the last couple of decades and there are more and more experienced designers in particular especially as digital services proliferate and so we see more and more people working in service design experienced design interaction design the third order of design getting up to the more abstract and complex level of systems design we're talking here about designing businesses or redesigning systems of education or government for instance so many different kinds of design and depending which level or order you're working at will determine the kinds of methods or approach you should take and what kinds of impact you you're expecting to see so I think you know if we're talking about design capability it's also important to think about what kind of design what kind of design capability are we talking about and to be clear especially for those of us who work in and with the public sector that what works in corporate environments might not always translate well into into the public sector um and to be cognizant of the difference between for instance policy design and service design and in particular thinking about in a country like Australia things like democratic politics and bureaucratic structures and how design works within them when we're talking about public service design or public policy design another way I think that I find useful to differentiate between design approaches is borrowing Elizabeth Sanders idea about the difference between an expert mindset and a participatory mindset and recognising that um co-design which I'm particularly interested and experienced in sits within this family in a very particular location um in really simple terms we're talking about designing with people rather than designing two or four them um community-led design is often something that those interested in co-design aspire for where people we're actually designing by people however if you work with a public or community or not for profit kind of organization it's quite rare to hand over resources and authority entirely to communities and let them fully lead um so that though would be the kind of you know really really embracing that participatory mindset and actually um allowing people most affected by the decision to be making the decisions not to have professionals making them on their behalf it is super tough though we are generally working in sectors that value professional standards and specialist expertise I'm you know a former and occasional academic myself so I'm definitely familiar with the challenge of moving from an expert to a participatory mindset it's not easy but if we actually want to do co-design we have to be making that shift in practice um as hard as it is to achieve and maintain in the public policy context again we're talking specifically about a huge shift in policymaking practice from policy makers as experts and analysts to people who need to facilitate and convene and connect with citizens and there's a quote there from the co-design capability program that I evaluated in 2017 from a policymaker who said after going through this co-design program you can read the research and know the facts but it's different when you're actually faced with someone and they're really open about the problem and tell you lots about their life this requires quite a different role for people to play the challenge is for those of us who want to support design capability is that mindsets are really hard to teach they're pretty deeply held ways of seeing and being in the world and it's a lot easier to teach a toolkit co-design though is a lot more than a toolkit as this article says co-design should be regarded first as a philosophy and only second a method so a lot of the proponents of co-design are really emphasizing the mindsets and the principles I myself think those are really valuable but if you're introducing people to a new a new method and way of working it's a lot easier to provide people with like tools that are just kind of ready to go and easy to pick up but don't quite give people necessarily the nuance and skills to adapt for the context in which they're working one of the things though I've realized recently especially as I'm focusing more and more on supporting others to learn about and apply co-design methods is that people who are new need rule-based learning so some of us more experienced designers may get a little bit cynical and critical about models like the double diamond or human center design toolkits but the the thing is is when people are new to to something they need actually they need simpler easier to follow steps and sequences so there's a balance between kind of showing people all the complexity and nuances and expecting people to be able to choose the best method and giving people somewhere to start so one of the things again this is a diagram from Nest's playbook for innovation learning that I've been drawing on for my maturity model is really trying to be able to help people differentiate between where they are at in their journey and to be able to choose the right kinds of learning and support that they need to to get where they want to go and so finally the final key learning I want to share is that design is a craft and it requires learning by doing I realized that myself when I was learning on the job I'd gone from you know a very academic context doing my PhD to suddenly needing to learn how to do things in a different way and it was a really effective way to learn by trying things out by observing what others were doing by reflecting on my practice and this experiential learning cycle that Colb developed it is a really good way of thinking about how adults learn especially for a craft or a practice like design so these are kind of the some of the key things that I've learned about when we're evaluating how design capability is being built particularly in the public and social sectors are important to keep in mind that there are different levels of capability design and change that if we're talking about more participatory approaches like co-design we need to be realistic about how challenging it is to shift from an expert to a participatory mindset that toolkits are easier to teach than mindsets and actually can be useful at the beginning before people have enough experience to be able to decide themselves how to pick and adapt tools for for the work that they're doing and that we're talking about a craft which requires learning by doing so I am going to keep going so that I can make sure you get a chance to test this out I understand that Mallory's going to be collecting questions on the chat and hopefully we'll have at least a few minutes at the end for questions so if you've got any questions do feel free to put them in the chat but what I would like to do is talk about this maturity model and give you a chance to test it out to see how I'm putting these ideas into practice so the reason that I have developed this model is to try and help people identify their strengths and needs in co-design it's the kind of thing especially if you are newer to it or you're you know somewhat experienced it can be kind of hard to know where to go and how to develop your skills or knowledge more or where you might want to focus on so it's something that individuals can use in that way but also a way to help people assess their readiness for co-design co-design is not always the right approach and the conditions do not always support it but how do you know so I'm hoping this talk can kind of help especially thinking about the organisational context that people are working within and you know quite simply it's a maturity model so the idea is to try and understand your maturity to see it as at this point in time where I where are you at and it might be applied at the level of an individual a team or an organisation so you'll get the chance to apply it at one of those levels today. One thing to say too is that the maturity model is based on a framework I developed a couple years back to articulate what co-design practice looks like at that fourth order of systemic design so thinking about something that we could call co-design and complex systems or systemic design and it built on my earlier work trying to understand and articulate what co-design is in the context of public policy where I really honed in on it being a practice a process and a set of principles but in this model I also bring in place and people because I think they're often forgotten in other frameworks about doing this work so we'll talk through these domains in a moment because they're the same domains that appear in the maturity model if you are interested in learning more about this the systemic design practice framework that's kind of the predecessor to the maturity model is up on my website and I'll just check the link in the chat there so you can go and read deeply about it later if you're interested it's this is also where I will end up putting the maturity model early next year hopefully so this is the high level view of what it what it looks like at this point so we've got five different levels that we can kind of use to describe someone or an organization's maturity and co-design starting out at explore at the bottom where people are just starting to get curious about co-design it's something they've heard of but they don't yet maybe understand exactly what's evolved and how it can deliver value I think what's important for me too is articulating the difference between understanding something and actually being able to apply it so we might understand the concepts of that of something and I think there's a lot of people out there who get what co-design is this idea of designing with and and actually see the appeal but that doesn't mean you can do it so actually talking about applying the principles and practices in context is the next level getting up to a more sophisticated level where you're integrating co-design and that's where you're going further than just picking up a pre-existing tool but you're actually able to adapt and embed principles and practices at your work and at the top there there will be very very few individuals and organizations that are at that level of flourish where you're actually evolving and spreading co-design practice across the system so this is also to recognize we wouldn't expect everyone at anyone to be able to to be at the level of flourish before I go any further I'll launch my final poll and so this is a chance for you just to think about where you're at before I explain anything else just have a go at saying either think about yourself as an individual or choose a team or organization that you're working with them or with and like tell us how would you rate your overall level at the moment totally anonymous and we'll see we'll see where people are at here before we get a bit more nuanced and once again if you cannot interact with the poll you're very much welcome to write in the chat just one of these words explore understand apply integrate or flourish is the 81% of you have participated in the poll I'll just give it another minute maybe if people are still trying to work out where to where to place themselves I'm going to end that poll now and share these results with you so we can see we've got a real mix on this on this seminar today highest is that understand level and I'm probably not surprised it's probably why you're here you're kind of interested you've got a you've got some understanding about co-design but actually if we think about who's on the call there's a lot of evaluators and researchers so you're not necessarily doing or even expected to do co-design but a lot of understanding out there and quite a few 30% of you are already applying co-design so that's that's awesome 11% are integrating and we've got one person who identifies as flourishing awesome good for you and 24% so a quarter of the people here are exploring you're getting curious about co-design so that's where if I just share this with you especially acknowledging if you're just getting curious about co-design you're probably not even sure like what do you know what don't you know that you don't know what you know where do you how where are you exactly so let's break it down a little bit more and in a moment I'm going to give you a link to actually do a little quiz and get a another way to think about it I guess one thing I would just share before then so today I'm just going to give you the high level quiz but one of the things I'm interested in doing when I am actually going to be using this as a more fully fledged tool is able to kind of make recommendations for people and one of the things I've already noticed is like the training that I offer currently is pitched at different levels of that so you know I offer an introduction workshop to co-design and that's very much for people who are just beginning to explore and understand I've got another short course that I offer that assumes some prior knowledge so it assumes that people showing up have some understanding I'm not doing the real 101 version for them but that they're in the very challenging position of trying to apply co-design in their work and then I've got quite a different program for people who already have that knowledge and understanding and are actually trying to take their their co-design practice to the next level and so that's quite a different program where it's really designed around short training sessions and lots of people applying, reflecting, discussing with peers so I think you know that's obviously one way that I'm looking at using this tool but I've heard from already some individuals and organisations that there's other ways that people might be able to use it so that's something you can think about as we go so we just did this poll of I'll stop sharing it too of how you'd rate your overall or individual team level and what I'm going to invite you to do now is to take a quiz and I'll explain each of these questions as we go through so I'll also throw this link into the chat you can just copy it down or use the QR code to get a copy of the quiz or in the chat here you can find the link to do this so what I'll do is I'll talk through each of those four key domains and you can assess your level as we go so you can use the form the forms particularly there so you've got a reference if you like you can submit it at the end and then see the overall results that people have done but the first thing you need to do is decide whether you want to complete that quiz at an individual team or organisational level and just be consistent for each of those with each of the questions so the first level or area domain as I'm calling them is people and when we're talking about people and design and co-design we're thinking about relationships and participation in particular so I'd like you to think about where you're at in terms of people are you just getting curious about what different people can bring to a co-design process do you already understand the value of incorporating different kinds of knowledge into our work and there we're really talking about in particular the difference between lived experience and learned experience or the difference between different kinds of you know specialist technical and living knowledge applying it is going beyond just thinking it's a good idea to invite people with lived experience into the work but actually having dedicated resources and roles for co-design and forming co-design teams with people from different backgrounds so that would be not just you know a project team made up of people in the same kind of role at your organisation integrating is going a bit further and having ethical and responsive practices that really take into account safety and reward the contributions of a diverse range of people who would not only take part in co-design but also a diverse range of people being able to lead co-design sorry and finally flourish would be really unlikely at an individual level on your own you probably need to be part of a group or organisation to be at the level of flourish here to be investing and building capacity and creating the conditions for participation at that level you model and advocate for culturally grounded power sensitive and trauma responsive practices so please use the quiz to pick what level you think you're at currently for people place is the next domain and I find this is often one I have to explain a little bit more because it's not one we're always explicitly asked to think about but another way to think about it would be context and conditions so conditions here we're thinking in particular about organisational conditions for supporting innovation and participation so if you're at that explore level you're beginning to see that context matters for co-design that not all it's not all one size fits all understand would be you can actually identify the location and level at which you're working so that order of design that I shared earlier and you understand the importance of identifying location and level and the importance of having a supportive environment for innovation and participation apply is when you are able to choose a co-design approach that specifically will work in the context where you're based and you're actually realizing that you know as much as everyone is the expert in their own lives and people are creative you do actually need to work to create conditions that support participation and innovation and you're starting to do that work integrating is when you're getting to be able to adapt and iterate co-design processes principles and practices so you know you're thinking about where you're working how you're working and you're not just taking something off the shelf and trying to fit it into where you're working but you're able to adapt it and that you're embedding innovative and participative ways of working in your organization or network flourishing is where you'd explicitly challenge one size fits all approaches and be able to critically reflect on your role within the system you'd be sharing nuanced learnings about the conditions for co-design and building trust and capacity for innovation and participation across your system or sector whatever it is that you would identify as being part of so please choose where you're at in relation to place practice out there domain can also be thought about of core capabilities so this is kind of most aligned with other capability frameworks where people are looking at the different kinds of skills and knowledge needed to do co-design work so you're probably at the level of explore if you're new to design generally you're just kind of starting to learn about the methods tools and techniques if you know what the difference between human center design and co-design practices and you're really interested in learning about creative and participatory ways to achieve shared goals then you're at that understand level you're applying it if you're actually using those methods and techniques to work with a diverse range of people and as part of that it's also you know recognizing that an important part of co-design is building mutual understanding and developing promising ideas to achieve shared goals so that's what you should be doing if you're applying co-design again integrate is about adapting and embedding so finding ways to bring co-design into your ways of working not only co-design projects you might be thinking about how to work in co-designally ways with colleagues and communities for instance and flourish you will be pushing practice forward at that level developing approaches to co-design that integrate tools techniques methods from other fields and also supporting or training others to build their capabilities and co-design so where do you think you are in relation to practice and finally process so there's a little bit of overlap between practice and process but in process we're thinking more you know while practice was about more about individual and team capabilities processes thinking more about the broader the broader structures of the work and thinking about planning and stewardship in particular so at the first level you're probably interested in following a design practice a process but you would be go a bit further to be familiar with the iterative phases of design if you're at the understand level and understand you'd be interested in how to be more flexible and adaptive so not too rigidly following a pre-existing process apply you've probably got your own approach to co-design it might be something that your organization or sector uses that is kind of fit for context you'd also be thinking about navigating key moments with care and the key moments that I articulate in the systemic design practice framework other moments of invitation when you're deciding whether or not to do the work preparation when you're getting ready to invite and engage other people in the work navigation so key milestones or moments or inflection points throughout the project and finally completion so thinking about completion integrate the integrate level talks about adapting your approach involving responding to needs planning for endings and building capacity for implementation that you would not begin or continue a co-design process unless the right conditions were in place and finally that level of flourish if you're there you're modeling flexible and responsive processes for co-design that do result in beneficial outcomes you're actually making a difference by following these processes and your training and supporting others to follow these processes and navigate these key moments with care again you're ready to finish and leave a project when it's appropriate and you'd probably help people to understand when co-design is not the right approach so where are you at with process and just once again if you've dropped out and come back in we are completing the quiz here that is at this link if you submit the quiz now well one thing I'd say is if you want your individual answers just take a screenshot or note of them because it's totally anonymous so they won't get sent to you or anything but you can see the overall results so far if you submit this is the second group who's completed it the last group interestingly was a more design focused audience that when I presented this to the CX Collective who are a New Zealand based design community so you can see what results there are I have a few few minutes for questions but I would also just like to invite you to kind of copy or click on this link now for another survey and this is a chance for you to give me some feedback on the session and the quiz and sign up if you would like a copy of these slides I'll also be really happy to break down the results from today's session for individual team and organization type responses so if you want to put your details down I can share them with you or you can also sign up for other updates I'm also as I mentioned currently developing an individual assessment tool that is a much more fleshed out version of what we did today that has many questions for each of those domains and helps to kind of make some of the differentiation between an individual capability and organizational context and conditions so I'm developing that tool and we'll be using it as an assessment for my co-design practitioner's program and perhaps also offering it in future but I'm really keen to get feedback especially you know it's great that we've got so many people who are at different levels of maturity today and who work not necessarily in design and so I'm quite interested in getting feedback on how this makes sense or resonates or not with you and welcome any feedback you'd like to give me via that link that would be so appreciated the good news is because I rest through this we've got I think about 10 minutes for questions if anyone would like to so Mallory shall I hand over to you? Yes absolutely thanks Emma much is take off spot by there so I can see everybody's screen so I'm Mallory from FBC I'm filling in for Matt Healy today I'm coming to this bit last minute so it's been super interesting for me to see and listen to that session so thanks so much Emma for that and we've got one question in the chat so I might put that to you and then just open it up to the floor if people want to use just use the raise your hand function in the chat so the question from a little bit earlier in the presentation and it's when the community become advocates and then professional advocates would their input then be considered community led? For me it's very much about who holds the kind of power and resources so if community advocates are able to advocate for what they want that's great but if I guess it depends what we're talking about like if we're talking about a program or project that they are actually leading then absolutely but if they're just advocating to an organization that is delivering something then I wouldn't call that community led. I'm happy to like if someone wants I think because it's a very much it depends kind of a response I'm really happy if whoever that question wants to elaborate and I can give it. Hi Emma sorry thank you that was my question I think what you said about who's holding the power is is really the the key so yeah I appreciate that the context is you know the professional advocates and in the health system you know as they do become very experienced what we're hearing is that then they kind of lose their sense of being the people with lived experience who are who are speaking as someone who doesn't necessarily have all the knowledge about the system and so yeah that it's just a being at the top of my mind as an interesting dynamic and not quite sure how to integrate it into what I'm writing. Yeah it is a really interesting tension at the moment Lauren like one of the things that's really fantastic to see in the health sector in particular mental health in particular is respect for lived experience and the professionalization of it but that is it comes with challenges because then those people start becoming part of the system if you're actually a professional so I think one of the things if you are taking a co-design approach would be that you are not only working with professionals with lived experience that you are engaging people who do not work in and for that system that you're part of or the organization that's involved and you're engaging people who you know aren't burdened with the the knowledge of how to navigate the system but actually maybe better represent the the average or extreme users or consumers and so I think it's great to have professionals ideally you can have people with lived experience leading that work so you've got peer workers but I think it's really important not to you know to only engage professionals in the work. Yeah thank you. Thanks Emma. I'll just open it to the floor now if anyone has any other questions they'd like to jump in with. I have to jump out but I just wanted to say thank you I really enjoyed it. Bye. Thank you. Thanks Willie. Just maybe a question about how you found the kind of tools useful across the kind of different kinds of work that you do. Which tools would that be Oh sorry the maturity model I mean particularly. Yeah so I haven't used it much yet so I've been developing it and kind of testing it in sessions like this. The first application like proper application of it for me is going to be for my main program that is for experienced co-design practitioners. One of the challenges I've had with that I get lots of people who want to be part of that program there's only 15 places and I have to decide who's at a level where they've got enough understanding to really make the most of it but they're also working in a context where they can apply the learnings. So I'm going to be using this tool firstly at an individual level to be to be helping me to understand where people are at and not in just a you need to be high enough but like you know that you do have some challenges you do want to learn you do have area to grow as well. The next iteration I see possible and you know I'm keen for feedback on this because I've had feedback to is at an more organizational level where you would actually be getting different different people in that organization giving their view and rating you know the organization to come up with kind of an integrated picture. I think though that's going to need to be quite context specific because it's different sectors in different countries will have different norms even you know testing this with some colleagues from the states they've commented on how differently we talk about decolonization here in Australia and New Zealand and like for me that's a really important part of the place domain but I think these things do depend on the context in which you're working. So I yeah I mean you know if anyone's interested I would be keen if there is an organization that's keen to use this and sponsor the you know development of a tool for use in their context I'm like open I'm open to working with people next year on that. Thanks Emma just had two more questions in the chat one's about co-design resources is there perhaps some way you could direct people to for that and then the other one we've got is about overcoming barriers to doing co-designing complex systems we've probably only got two minutes for that question so see if we can get a really high level view of how your response might be there. Yeah at the risk of being a bit self-promotional I've got a co-design resource bank that I've developed that is available to members of our community of practice Jethro's Jethro's a member too of Co-design Co. Willie who just left also was one so I found I mean I think one thing to say is doing co-design you can use resources from lots of different places and disciplines and fields so I don't think there's you know an exclusive one stop shop but I have been a bit of a magpie collecting things from different places over the years and trying them out and borrowing them and taking recommendations from others and I've got a bit of a bit of a bulging resource bank that is where I now go I'm like oh have I saved that there I'd also probably yeah put a shout out Auckland Co-design Lab you know have some really great resources and things on their website as well and there's a bunch of others too the other question of yeah overcoming barriers it's pretty big because there's lots of different kinds of barriers so maybe I don't know if we've got time if that person wants to ask their question aloud and I can Haley yeah yeah so I work in a government context but also doing my PhD research in within the residential care space for children and young people and encountering challenges to doing the co-design work because of ethical constraints and not being able to actually engage the children and young people who are currently using the system to do this work meaningfully and can only really draw on people who have lived experience through like looked experience groups who get paid and so I'm just curious if you've had any success with doing this work with people who are current users of the system yeah totally it yeah it can be a challenge I think I mean sometimes it where it isn't possible the best thing you can do is to go through a proxy you know like someone who works with those people who can represent them and there have been times where I've been constrained and haven't been able to go through an ethical proper ethical process to be able to do research with those people and rather than just go oh well it's too hard go okay you know and this was for instance that supporting justice project early on where we were wanting to talk to people who had lived experience the justice system and thinking about children and young people in that context as well well we could at least talk to social workers or youth workers who worked with those people where there weren't as many ethical risks it's still not the same as involving those people and inviting people to speak directly for themselves and I think it's worth fighting for one thing I guess would be to say too is like you don't have to try and engage lots and lots of people everyone but even if you can just engage a few people and those people being the ones who are in a safe place and are most confident and capable even if it's someone who can speak on their previous experience and maybe they're not right now so maybe they're like 25 years old um but recently were a child or young person in their system and can speak to that kind of recent experience again like trying to find sometimes creative workarounds if you can't directly speak to the people in that situation right now um but a lot of the time I think um one of the problems we face is people trying to do work in too much of a rush and actually we should be going through a proper ethics process and taking the time to build relationships and develop trust and safety so that we can engage people um depending where you're at in an organization and in your experience you may have more or less influence on those processes um but where possible I would encourage people to try and slow it down so that you do have the time um to engage the people who need to be engaged and do it in a way where everybody is safe and comfortable thank you good luck by the way it's tough work thanks Emma um I've just shared a short survey in the chat from the AES um that appreciates some feedback if anybody can give a couple of minutes to that otherwise I think we're probably ready to wrap up so thanks so much and I'm sure everybody here I've got a lot out of that session um and as you said at the end I'm sure you'll be able to reach out to you and get in touch um last one slides or and the recordings obviously um going to be up or on the special description pages uh thanks everybody for your attendance today and thanks again Emma