Design Choices Framework for Co-creation Projects

Jung-Joo Lee, Miia Jaatinen, Anna Salmi, Tuuli Mattelmäki, Riitta Smeds, Mari Holopainen

Co-creation has been adopted in many recent design and innovation projects, bringing different stakeholders together and creating a shared understanding and new ideas through creative and participative approaches. Despite this increasing popularity, there is still a lack of a systematic understanding of key dimensions and design choices in co-creation projects due to contextual complexity and contingencies. In this paper, we develop the design choices framework for co-creation projects as a result of analyzing 13 co-creation projects from multiple fields, including design research, process innovation and service innovation. The design choices framework provides us with vocabularies that help to explain what kinds of dimensions co-creation projects are built on, what influences the formulation of co-creation projects and what informs the selection and development of methods. The framework also helps to assess and plan co-creation projects. We introduce ten design choices identified from the cross-case analysis and discuss their dynamic interrelations.