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Aaron Davis
University of South Australia

Dr Aaron Davis is a Lecturer in Architecture with a teaching and research focus on co-design and community engagement processes, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the intersection between social and environmental sustainability. Aaron has significant expertise in sociocultural and environmental sustainability, computer simulation, design processes, community engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration, and design for health and wellbeing. His experience in teaching in industry-linked and research-linked courses is highly regarded and he has a strong commitment to student learning outcomes and success. Aaron’s research practice is interdisciplinary, and Aaron has a strong emerging research profile. Aaron is recognised as a leader in development and delivery of highly engaging co-design approaches, and is currently working with the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Health, SAHMRI, CSIRO, the Australian Health Design Council, as well as a wide variety of architecture, engineering, and construction firms across Australia. This reflects his understanding of the importance of bringing industry partners into research, and to connect up-to-date industry practices into his teaching. Aaron is a member of IVE, the Centre for Interactive and Virtual Environments, and the Design Clinic, working on a range of healthcare, sensemaking, and data physicalisation projects.

https://www.aarondavis.com.au
22/03/2022| By
Aaron Aaron Davis,
+ 2
Michelle R. Michelle R. Tuckey

Purpose: This paper sets out a framework for planning co-design processes for complex sys-tems-based projects typical in healthcare settings. Background: Healthcare systems and environments are complex. Innovation often requires the redesign of physical spaces or objects, social processes, and the complex associated layers of ser-vice systems. Co-design is an established methodology for catalysing innovation in products and services because the scope is often well-defined but can be more challenging when working in sys-tems where complexity impacts boundary definition. Co-design uses interdisciplinary and mul-ti-level engagement with diverse stakeholders to catalyse innovation at the intersection between disciplines, experiences, and knowledge sets. The evaluation of these processes often utilises con-trol over decision-making as a defacto measure of participation quality, reflecting potential for stakeholders to influence key outcomes. Yet there are also practical and theoretical reasons to val-ue well-designed participatory processes in their own right. Methods: The framework presented in this paper combines the evaluation of participation in co-design processes and in decision-making as two distinctive activities, applied to real-world and hypothetical case studies that demonstrate the potential of this framework as a transparent plan-ning and evaluation tool. Results: The framework allows participation to be planned and valued independently without defaulting to control over decision-making processes as the (only) valued option. The case studies demonstrate its potential in structuring a range of collaborative processes that suit different types of system innovation. Conclusions: The formalisation of a framework for planning co-design activities that values participation in co-design processes in parallel with participation in decision-making provides a more transparent and beneficial way to structure co-design for complex systems-based challenges that recognises the humans at the heart of co-design.

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