Design facilitation: Insights from our ‘Reflection‑on‑Action’
How does creativity play a role when we facilitate the creativity of others? This question sits at the heart of our recently published open‑access journal article, Reflecting on the facilitation of virtual co‑creation: how is creativity involved?, now available in Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives.
Our research responds to the growing need to better understand creativity within the emerging practice of design facilitation. Drawing on Schön’s Reflection‑on‑Action framework, we examined our experience facilitating virtual co‑creation sessions with creative and cultural organisations.
Through this lens, we analysed how and where core aspects of creativity — flexibility, fluency, originality, and elaboration — emerge in the actions we take as facilitators supporting others’ creative processes.
Our analysis was guided by our facilitation structure, designed using IDEO’s design process, allowing us to reflect on the interplay between guided design methods and the spontaneous creative behaviours that arise during co‑creation.
Jo Ward, Senior Designer–Researcher and co‑author of the paper, explains:
“Reflection is an essential part of our practice as without it we are unable to make meaningful growth. In the case of facilitation, it supports us to deliver user‑centred sessions that meet the needs of the creatives and to articulate the value of the process we are undertaking with them.”
Beyond documenting our own practice, the research highlights broader implications for how design facilitation may continue to evolve across different contexts. We hope these insights will contribute to ongoing discussions about the relationship between reflection, creativity and design practice.
If you’d like to explore the research in full, you can read the open-access article here: Reflecting on the facilitation of virtual co‑creation: how is creativity involved?
You can also learn more about our ongoing work with Media Cymru and the Innovation Pipeline.