What is Co-creación and what does it contribute?

What are the origins of co-creation?

We can assure that co-creation is not an invention of one person, not even of the human being. Co-creation is the technical term we use to refer to cooperation in the creation process. There are many publications that claim that this impulse for shared creation is what made us advance as homo sapiens, establishing us as the rulers of the planet.

To cite just one book that comments on this and taking the opportunity to recommend its reading, we have “SAPIENS (DE ANIMALES A DIOSES)” by YUVAL NOAH HARARI,

Why is co-creation becoming a trend in innovation environments?

The main reason for its implementation in high-demand work environments is necessity. In such a changing environment and universe, co-creation brings a simple thing: it allows avoiding mistakes. Introducing users and different profiles into a creation process allows us to control the result in a much fuller way. Each person brings nuances to the different layers of understanding and subsequent creation of the result.

What is co-creation or participatory design?

Participatory design introduces the people who will use the product into the creation process itself. Clients, users, and citizens are equipped with tools and capabilities in collaboration with professionals in the field. They are able to provide their privileged point of view. If all the people involved in a product participate in the design process, it will respond to their needs and be more useful and usable.

This way of creating is part of the idea that design is part of our way of being as human beings. As we said at the beginning, collaboration made us advance as a species. The results of the processes, the designs are part of our life, of the tangible world. The people who use them are true experts in these.

From this perspective, the design function becomes a facilitator, the person who knows the processes and requirements. Thus, people become active agents who can solve the specific and concrete problems of each environment.

Advantages of the collaborative design process

Some of the advantages that we can find in this way of dissenyar are the ones already mentioned throughout the article. Co-creation implicitly carries the democratization of

design process and the training of people. This leads to the creation of more tailored and customized results, therefore of higher quality and functionality.

Other essential aspects developed in this process are the collaboration between different disciplines and areas of knowledge. This brings a great variety and richness of knowledge to the process and the final result. This enhances creativity, innovation, and originality.

Finally, decision-making and customer engagement with the final product are reinforced. This provides great value to our customer that goes beyond the product itself, as it connects them directly with the end user and emotionally links them to them.