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Co-design shifts transformation from being the burden of a few leaders to the shared work of the entire university and its stakeholders. Vice Chair & Managing Director of the University Design Institute, Minu Ipe, explains how inviting faculty, staff, students, and external partners into the design process builds ownership, unlocks creativity, and generates momentum for change. She emphasizes that well-structured co-design not only surfaces new leaders but also builds an institution’s long-term capacity to innovate and respond to evolving needs.
So co-design has become a really important part of both the way we think about the work and the way we do the work. Based on a lot of experiences we have had, both in projects at Arizona State University, and then with our partners around the world. Why is co-design particularly important for transformative changes? One, we all recognize that universities are not easy institutions in which to create change.
So the idea that somehow a leader can come in and just transform the system may be possible, but that's not a recipe that we would freely give out to people. Right? So we would then say, okay, so then how do you go about doing that? For us, co-design has been a helpful way to think about this, because who are all the people who need to come together to help solve a problem?
Universities are places where ideas are created, knowledge is generated. You have incredible intellect, you have incredible expertise of every kind and yet quite often those expertise are not channeled to helping the institution be better or the institution evolve is channeled towards research and publication that goes out or channeled towards some operational capabilities. And so within institutions, there's such an amazing amount of talent that gets untapped.
So I would say one lesson we have learned through our work is that find the talent within your own institution, find the people who are close to the problem. Find the people who think differently, who are ideas, people that will help really energize and create momentum for change. At any level, then, co-design is not just about the people within the institution.
It is really understanding: whose problem are we trying to solve, and how do they experience the problem? And often when universities take an inward looking view to answering that question, we come up with answers that make sense to us. They are not always exactly what our end users or our communities are experiencing, so co-design can then expand from the group within the institution to bring in stakeholders, funders, partners, community members to say, “What is the change that you would like to see?”
And not that we are saying External partners are dictating terms to the institution, but that we are going to be better informed when we talk to the people who have some skin in the game, who can support and help us advance these ideas, but also the people who we are ultimately trying to serve. And if they can come on board shaping the ideas and whatever we do is going to be so much more impactful.
So co-design can extend to that group outside as well. What we have learned that sometimes is so magical about these co-design experiences is watching people have those moments. They come into these environments with very low expectations. They've been there, they've talked about things before, and it's never really gone anywhere. And well designed co-design experiences can be just hugely amazing, fun experiences for those who are participating.
So they leave feeling energized. They leave feeling committed to this thing that the institution is trying to build. So there are places to recruit talent, co-design experiences. We have in almost every instance found leaders who could help lead this, people we were not looking at. But it's the way they engaged in these co-design sessions within the work that we have done at Arizona State University for almost a decade now, we have found that this helps to support the culture of the institution.
Approaching design from this co-design space is bringing people in. It really helps to build the muscle of the university to approach design, because you have faculty and staff and students have all been part of this. And sometimes when people are part of multiple co-design experience, as they develop the skills, they develop the tools, and then they go back to wherever they sit and they replicate some of these processes and the things that they are trying to lead.
So you normally find leaders emerge through co-design, but you [are] really building the muscle of the institution through these co-design efforts to actually be more agile and be more innovative and be more open to ideas. And then ultimately, I would say it takes the burden off of leaders to figure this all out on their own. It's really leaders providing the strategic direction for the initiative, but then finding all of the talented humans that are available to each of us as universities to help reimagine and rebuild a better future for our institutions and those that we are trying to serve.
The buy-In piece is really important. Most of us don't like change, but we are okay with change, at least if we feel like we've had a voice in it. And some people who really actually want to be part of change processes are very invited in. It's hugely powerful, right? So that buy-in piece is important. There is also the notion that the way we have been thinking about designing universities can't be the way we think about designing the universities of the future.
So when we talk about transformational learning experiences for students, if the only people in the room designing those learning experiences are the faculty who are already teaching, the staff who sort of help manage the programs. And now sometimes the technology people who are coming in with their tools. Where is the learner in all of this? But how are we thinking about designing learning experiences for people without their voices in the room, without their hopes and aspirations or their ideas, all their sort of their interests and how they want to learn.
So I think we have, through co-design, an opportunity to sort of better inform ourselves and actually learn some things that maybe we don't know. All this moving around us really quickly. Our learners are coming to us much more technologically adept and savvy than many adults who live and work in universities. Societies and our communities are evolving in ways that we may not always be aware of.
So why wouldn't we learn? Universities are institutions of learning, and co-design is a mechanism through which we can continuously learn, so that we can design ourselves to be more impactful for our communities.
So change is not possible, often comes when people are preoccupied with the challenges of managing the institutions, and we recognize that universities are really complex organizations, and leading a university is unlikely, leading pretty much any other type of social organization. And so, yes, sometimes that can feel overwhelming and burdensome. And yet for those leaders that we work with who are willing, ready and able to engage, they are looking at the possibilities.
They are looking at what the universities can do to actually have greater impact for learners, for their communities. And so there is a groundedness in the understanding of the barriers and the issues and resources and so on. But that is sort of balanced or in some ways, the excitement and the possibility of change outweighs the barriers.
And so part of it is finding those leaders who are in those spaces and who are willing to put themselves and bring their institutions and their teams forward. The other way to think about this is [to] look at institutions that have changed and to not replicate their model, but learn from those institutions that have been on this journey of transformation.
And sitting at Arizona State University, a university that's been really transforming itself continuously for almost 22 years. We know without a shred of doubt that change and transformation is possible. Within universities, faculty, staff and students can be amazing partners to change. Involving external stakeholders is hugely helpful, so change is possible. What we try to do through our work at the University Design Institute is to point in the direction of places where change is happening, to support and walk beside those leaders who are ready to take that plunge themselves.