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Frequently Asked Questions
If you have any other questions just let me know.
Who are stakeholders?
What is stakeholder or user engagement?
What is user experience (UX)?
What is lived experience?
What is co-design?
What is co-production?
What is community development?
What is consultation?
Stakeholders are anyone who can affect, or be affected by, an organisations actions, objectives, policies and services. They can be users of services, their carers, staff, partner organisations and local communities.
User or stakeholder engagement is defined as the desire and capability to actively choose to participate, in cooperation with a service provider or institution, for the purposes of maximising outcomes or improving user experiences. It’s a process of developing relationships that enable stakeholders and/or communities to work together to address common issues. By working collaboratively with stakeholders organisations are better able to understand what they want and need, when they want it, how engaged they are and how the organisations plans and actions will affect them. Stakeholders are involved in decision-making and can influence how things are done. Feedback, consultation, co-production and co-design are all part of stakeholder engagement.
Example: patients choosing to actively participate in their care in cooperation with their healthcare provider over the development of services.
User experience (UX) is a person's emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service and how a user interacts with and experiences it. Additionally, it can include a person's perceptions of things such as usefulness, ease of use and efficiency. User experience is usually subjective in nature because it is about individual perception and thought for a product or system. User experience varies dynamically, constantly modifying over time due to changing usage.
Example: when designing an app or website
Lived experience means having personal knowledge about the world gained through direct first hand involvement in events. ‘Lived’ is used to differentiate from others who may have experience of working in, for example, the field of mental health, but who have not personally lived through those challenges.
Example: having first hand experience of a particular health condition or substance use challenges
Co-design (sometimes called participatory design) is an approach attempting to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure the result meets their needs and is usable. Co-design is an approach which is focused on processes and procedures and is not a design style in itself. The term is used in a variety of fields e.g. software design, urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, product design, sustainability, graphic design, planning, and healthcare as a way of creating environments that are more responsive and appropriate to their inhabitants' and users' cultural, emotional, spiritual and practical needs.
Example: in healthcare co-design involves the equal partnership of individuals who work within the system (healthcare staff), individuals who have lived experience of using the system (patients and their families/carers) and the ‘designers’ of the new system (whether that be IT personnel in terms of electronic platforms to improve efficiency or researchers in terms of designing interventions to improve health systems).
Co-production involves producing a product or service together and comes after the co-design phase. Co-production involves all stakeholders in equal partnership but has a focus on those with lived experience. “The term co-production refers to a way of working, whereby everybody works together on an equal basis to create a service or come to a decision which works for them all.” (Think Local Act Personal). Co-creation usually refers to both co-design and co-production taken together.
Community Development is a process where people come together to take action on what’s important to them. It is rooted in the belief that all people should have access to health, wellbeing, wealth, justice and opportunity. It supports communities of place and identity to use their own assets to improve the quality of community life. It helps communities and public agencies to work together to improve services and the way in which decisions are made. Community development is based on the values of human rights, social justice, equality and respect for diversity.
Consultation is the process of discussing something with someone in order to get their advice or opinion about it.
Example: surveys asking people’s opinions of a service they have just received. User interviews asking about interviewees journey through a range of healthcare settings. Information gathered may be used to drive service change and improvement or maybe used to monitor the quality and consistency of services delivered.
If you have any further questions please use the form below, ring me on 0791 325 7971 or email engagement@martha-cox.com
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