Design Methods for Catalyzing Co-creation in Community Building: An Evaluating Approach

Community building, an intricate design endeavor integrating place, people, and their interactions, involves the provision of diverse methods by designers to facilitate stakeholder co-creation. Despite this prevalent practice, there needs to be more research on the appropriateness of design methods for community-building projects and assessing their efficacy. Following Hester’s (1975) methods evaluation scale, this study orchestrated co-design workshops with target professional designers. The workshops systematically captured preferences and evaluations from designers with different backgrounds addressing the same community building issue. The study presented a descriptive account of the results, conducted through comparisons and reflective analyses, which elucidates that factors of accessibility, usability, flexibility, and communication form influence users’ assessments of tools. This finding contributed a strategy for design methods evaluation, thereby establishing foundational principles for methods selection in the intricate realm of community building endeavors.