The challenges to implement digital technologies in community-based projects are exposed in a case study co-designing an indigenous Community Museum, situated in the Kelabit Highlands of Borneo, Malaysia. Over a five-year period, this co-design project consisted of field trips, community engagements, and creating a documentary film and an inaugural exhibition in the newly constructed Kelabit Museum. This article highlights the limitations of digital technologies in museum contexts. Co-designing with stakeholders resulted in the decision to take a non-digital approach to the museum development to encourage greater community agency and prevent disengagement, as it incorporated heritage values in local community developments and cultural tourism plans. The findings demonstrate that community self-determination conflicted with preconceived outcomes, resulting in a need to re-evaluate the goals of the project. Instead, the ambition of cultural heritage preservation that maintained community participation emerged as the central goal. Removing the focus on a digital solution expanded community participation, which is a finding that should be used to frame other community cultural developments.

Communication designers have historically been accused of neglecting end-user perspectives, believing designers are experts at creating inspired designs. Codesign has been applied to many design fields, however developing methods for engaging end-users have had little traction in communication design practice. In an era of end-user engagement, communication designers are left wondering how and when to include end-users in the design process and if codesign offers any benefits to project outcomes. This study trialled codesign workshops across two communication design case studies. Both studies involved non-profit contexts where designers and staff co-created communication design strategies, one for sustainable cleaning in childcare centres and the other for asthma management and awareness. The findings reveal that structured, hands-on generative toolkits conducted in small groups, sparked conversation and prompted innovative ideas whereas evaluating ideas with ranking toolkits blocked dialogue and hindered idea progression. Evaluation tooolkits based on ranking ideas created unexpected barriers to engagement, as end-users disengaged from the codesign process. I argue codesign can benefit communication design when structured hands-on generative toolkits simulate a perceived familiar environment, creating a conversational forum for ideas to flow while participants enjoy creating things with their hands.

Interest in co-design is growing in the design literature, as is problem-based learning in design education, yet little research exists on teaching co-design in collaboration with industry partners. This leaves design educators wondering ‘what is the influence of teaching co-design with actual industry partners on student learning?’ This study discusses a case study where two industry partners were invited to collaborate with seniors and multi-discipline design students to redefine ageing. Both projects involved co-designing future assistive technologies. The results demonstrate that when design students and seniors co-designed prototypes to de-stigmatize images of ageing, the results delighted our end-users. The findings suggest combining co-design methods with health-related industry briefs offers an immersive environment for design students to learn and apply creative strategies to propose novel designs, in new complex domains. As designers are not experts in health, co-design methods give designers tools to leverage expert end-user knowledge to produce innovative, high impact designs – hence opening up new work domains.

This paper presents a case study where participatory design practices were used to design a cultural museum and inaugural exhibition with designers from an Australian university and the Kelabit community in the Highlands of Borneo. We draw on experiences from fieldtrips, across a five-year period, investigating the exchange of expertise between participants. The findings show a shift in roles when sharing expertise throughout our participatory design process. Participants experienced a lack of clarity and a sense of discomfort while participating in the design of the museum resulting in the need to continually negotiate leadership of the project. The designers discovered their role was to facilitate intangible conversations into tangible outcomes, where participatory design tools reshaped conversations rather than designed final artefacts. We argue that when exchanging expertise across cultures in participatory design, participant roles become organic and ambiguous.

This paper aims to understand how co-design influences the design process, by presenting a case study where graphic designers and end-users co-designed asthma information. Three co-design activities are presented, as part of a larger project, revealing insights for the next generation of graphic designers. The co-design activities built a trusting, enjoyable environment, while posing the question are designers still in charge of the process? A visual verbal game dissolved participant status barriers, a persona scenario activity uncovered the real brief and a mix and match card game suspended participant politics. The findings suggest that co-designing with end-users, challenges graphic designers’ use of intuition, as new ways of categorizing asthma information material were revealed that previous design-led processes had overlooked. This study confirms the rich contribution of end-users’ creativity, when designers relinquish creative control, ultimately revealing co-design as a valuable approach for graphic designers engaging in bottom-up design processes.

Authentic learning is widely recognised as critical for graduate employability, yet embedding it across curricula presents challenges, including resourcing, time for redevelopment, and managing large-scale cultural change. Scalable approaches require pilot studies to explore how authentic learning principles can be implemented and scaffolded effectively. This paper presents a case study of an Australian university’s co-created ‘Authentic Learning Blueprint’, designed to embed industry/community engaged learning throughout the learner’s experience. Phase one involved a team of educators, drawing on insights from learners, and employer feedback to co-develop the Blueprint. The Blueprint allows learners to progress through scaffolded stages, Novice, Associate, and Emerging Practitioner, gaining discipline-specific and industry-ready skills through real-world project briefs and work-integrated learning experiences. The Blueprint distributes teaching and learning responsibilities across learners, educators, and industry/community in a three-way partnership model. Learning experiences were designed to reflect knowledge and skills relevant to professional practice. In phase two, the proof-of-concept was applied to two design units, one undergraduate and one postgraduate, and we tested acceptance and scalability, with positive student feedback. Phase three showcases how the Blueprint then informed curriculum redesign within the design school’s flagship course, including trials of ungraded assessment to further support authentic learning. The findings demonstrate that a co-created, scaffolded approach integrating industry-engaged experiences from enrolment to graduation can bridge the gap between academia and professional practice. This study contributes a practical framework for embedding authentic learning at scale, offering insights for institutions seeking to enhance employability through curriculum innovation.