Directing, collaborating or suggesting: a literature review on co-design facilitation
Wenqi Zheng, Germán Mauricio Mejía, Danah Henriksen · CoDesign · 2025
With an expanding body of literature on design facilitation exploring various approaches across diverse contexts, this article provides a comprehensive review, mapping out how designers engage in this role. The aim was to select case studies from the literature to understand the approaches and implications of design facilitation. In the data analysis, three primary facilitation styles emerged: directing, collaborating, and suggesting. These styles reflect distinct design facilitation approaches, each with implications for the power of facilitators, the agency of stakeholders, and the creative contributions of participants. The popularity of directing in design facilitation suggests that facilitators tend to be practical and may not share their power as effectively as they intend. Notably, the case studies in the literature are largely from academic work, with a noticeable absence of industry cases. This shows the urgent need for research on design facilitation in professional design practices and settings.