how we made doing research together

First, we (NSW Regional Health Partners) set up a working group and contracted co-design specialists to support us. Acknowledging the busyness of many researchers, consumers and carers, we followed a user-centred design process (UCD) that focused on in-depth one-to-one conversations in place of numerous group workshops. The project was funded by the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF).

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Our design process involved:

  • working group members reviewing existing resources for strengths and weaknesses
  • meeting as a working group to talk about what our resource could be, what was out of scope, what our understanding of co-design and co-delivery in research was, and what words to use (e.g. instead of talking only about co-design we decided to talk about doing research, together)
  • holding focused semi-structured interviews with individual group members about what helps and hinders when co-designing and co-delivering research across the research cycle
  • building a digital prototype based on accessible design and principles named by working group members
  • holding one-on-one generative usability testing sessions with working group members and other helpers (listed below) that focused on improving usability, information architecture and our use of language as well as adding new crowd-sourced content
  • updating the prototype based on user feedback
  • co-developing a criterion to select existing and new tools to include in the resource; asking for nominations from the working group and other helpers and performing a gap analysis to identify opportunities for new tools
  • creating a first draft of new tools to fill gaps and address the needs described by our experienced co-design in research experts
  • testing the draft tools further with interested working group members and other helpers using one-to-one conversations and feedback by email

Our working group included consumers, researchers, health staff, NSW Regional Health Partner staff, representatives from NSW Regional Health Partners partner organisations and co-design specialists KA McKercher (Beyond Sticky Notes) and Sue Muller (Better Together Collective) who made the NSW Health All of Us framework.

  • Nicki Hodyl
  • Jessie Sutherland
  • Cate Dingelstad
  • Zoi Triandafilidis
  • Saije Endacott
  • Brigitte Sigl
  • Ivy Scurr
  • Vivienne Scott
  • Pauletta Irwin

Outside the group we had help from people with experience and expertise in the co-design and co-delivery of research to review our words, a website prototype and newly developed tools. These helpers included:

  • Laura Griffin (NSW)
  • Allison Carter (NSW)
  • Kath Thorburn (NSW)
  • Av De Vries (NSW)
  • Kelsey Pateman (QLD)
  • Kenneth Pang (VIC)
  • Gillian Mason (NSW)
  • Sarah Lukeman (NSW)

We engaged Lucy Klippan (Good Point Design) for the visual design.

go to the next section – work together from start to end