Co-Creation Research

What is Co-Creation Research?

Co-creation is an iterative and collaborative in-context research approach that allows your organization to lean into a new business or design opportunity quickly. By co-creating solutions with end users/customers in their real life context, you will be able to learn rapidly about how big the opportunity is, what the nature of a useful solution is, and what upcoming challenges across design execution are. Having this in-depth understanding of specific and desired outcomes is an important early stage step that all product or service providers should consider before designing prototypes or launching a product.

At Highland, our co-creation process goes beyond traditional market research and allows us to gain deeper insights into the decision-making process of your end users. By facilitating participatory creation experiences, we work directly with your customers/users to design, build, and launch products that truly fit their needs. We not only co-create with end users but also bring together people from other parts of the solution ecosystem: stakeholders, employees, competitors, and more.

How is Co-Creation Research Valuable?

Collaborative Creation Experiences

Co-designing with end users/customers as part of your research projects is one of the most effective ways to learn quickly about the extent and promise of a design opportunity. Our team of design researchers lead a co-creation process that:

• Builds clarity on strengths and weaknesses of an idea or an opportunity from the get-go, avoiding longer cycles of design and subsequent feedback

• Encourages diverse opinions to be shared and enables communication between different stakeholder groups—from customers, to employees, to competitors and more.

• Dives into the solution realm without delay, bridging opportunity-finding and solution-design. 

In-Context Research Methods

Traditional market research evaluates ideas through remotely conducted surveys or out-of-context focus groups, thereby not really understanding how an idea or opportunity fits into users’ context. Our qualitative research and observation-based methodology reveals how a new product or service interacts with end users’ environments  and   and surfaces the upside potential as well as deficiencies in an idea.

• We employ a range of co-creation and co-design methods that generate a quick and contextual understanding of users’ environment, mental models, lifestyle fit, and desirability as it relates to an idea or opportunity.

• Co-creation sessions provide opportunities for real-time problem solving and validation that are essential to bridging the gap between ideation to action in the design process across all your initiatives.
  
  

Value Co-Creation

Users want to help shape their own experiences and their feedback is a vital tool that allows you to better understand the value that they want to receive. Throughout this participatory design and research process, they can help you understand:

• How they use a product in their daily lives

• How they interact with your product

• What emotions occur while interacting with your product

• The rationale for their decision making