Explore and connect
Why do we need to explore and connect?
At the end of the explore and connect stage, your co-design team will have:
- a shared understanding of the issue or opportunity for co-design
- found out how the broader community of stakeholders feels about the issue or opportunity
- built relationships with key people and groups involved or impacted by the issue
Who is involved?
- The broader community of stakeholders. Members of your co-design team will connect with key people/groups and explore their experiences and perspectives on the issue or opportunity.
- The co-design team. The team will reflect on the information from the community engagement, and develop a shared understanding of the issue or opportunity for co-design.
What co-design methods, tools and templates could we use?
This is a relational process that involves engagement and conversation within the co-design team and with those in the broader community of stakeholders who are involved in or affected by the issue.
Here is a guide as to how you might do this:
- You might start with discussions within your co-design team, to get to know each other and the issue at hand.
- Follow this with engagement within the broader community of stakeholders.
- Bring back the findings from engagement to the co-design team to develop a shared understanding of the issue or opportunity for co-design
Your plan for engaging with the broader community of stakeholders should be developed by your co-design team to meet the needs of those you are engaging with.
When planning this, consider
- who is best to do this (e.g. someone in your co-design team, respected community member, staff member with existing connections)
- what is the best method (e.g. individual or small group conversations, yarning, consumer caucus/forum)
- where and when is the best place and time (e.g. in the community, after hours, online, during existing meetings/forums)
At this stage, it is often best to engage stakeholder groups separately. For example, bring together people with lived experience of the issue in one group, and health professionals in a separate group. This allows people to speak openly without fear of consequences, to air their grievances, find common ground and gain power as a group with shared experiences. This engagement could be led by members of the co-design team that identify with the stakeholder group (e.g. consumer on the co-design team could lead a discussion with people with lived experience), who then bring the findings back to the co-design team for consideration and decision making.
You might find it helpful to go back to the section on Engaging people with lived experience.
The Metro North Inclusive and Equitable Partnering with Consumers resource provides an overview of engagement methods. The IAP2 Engagement Methods Tool is another helpful resource available in Metro North (contact Metro North Engage for information about how to access this under the annual subscription)
We have collated a list of other tools which might guide this engagement, but feel free to adapt these or to not use any of these at all.
Do we need ethics approval?
It’s always good to discuss this with your research ethics team before you start, however if you are asking people about their experiences to inform local service improvement, you probably won’t need formal ethics review or approval as this does not meet the definition of research. However, if this is part of a research higher degree or you are wanting to develop new and generalisable knowledge (e.g. patient experience with a particular condition or treatment), then this may be considered research and require ethical approval.
Note: if you want to publish or present your co-design project externally, you will need talk to your ethics team about getting a letter of ethical exemption.
