An important part of co-design with children is work that takes place after and then in between design sessions. During co-design sessions with children, many design ideas will be generated which lead to numerous possible design directions. In between sessions, adults need to work together to analyze the design ideas generated and come up with next steps.
- Immediately after a co-design session when child co-designers leave, adults should remain and do a quick debrief of the session. While you may be tired from the session and tempted to skip this step, do not skip it! All adults should have a chance to contribute and be sure that the ideas that came out of their small design group are captured. This can be handled as a quick, stand-up meeting, between 15-30 minutes. During this time, you may wish to:
- Add notes to the Big Ideas
- Take photos of artifacts (i.e., low-tech prototypes) as well as notes taken during the session
- If the project is a long-term one that will have many co-design sessions, it is possible that at the debrief immediately after the session you can quickly plan the next session.
- For projects that have fewer co-design sessions, or where an outside partner is involved, it is likely that you will need follow-up adult debrief sessions in order to be intentional in planning. While it is best to have as many of the adults who were at the co-design session there as possible, it is not strictly necessary that everyone be there. It is best if you have at least one adult from each small design group attend.
- As in sessions with children, it is important to remain open to all ideas while doing adult debriefs. Even though you are all looking at the same data and information from the session, different adults may have different interpretations and ideas of design directions and next steps.
- During adult debriefs you are looking for themes, categories and directions. What ideas came up often? What surprising ideas came up? Will any of these be helpful not only now, but for future designing? For long-term projects that involve multiple co-design sessions, adult debriefs are often when you will come up with the beginnings of the design plan for the next session.
- Depending on the partners you are working with, different groups may have different requirements for documents that come out of debriefs. For internal projects, as long as you are able to jot down notes and have ideas for the next session, informal notes can be sufficient. Some partners will request more formal notes or reports, with sections for answers to the question of the day, notes from each group, and potential design directions and recommendations.
