Co-design & facilitation

Design the evaluation together, then use the tools to record it

Co-design is an ethic at the centre of social prescribing, and it belongs in the evaluation too. This guide gives you facilitation exercises to run with people who have lived experience, connectors, partners, and community before and while you use the digital tools on this site. The aim is simple: that the choices an evaluation rests on are made by a group in a room, and the forms on this site are where you write those choices down.

Why this comes first

An evaluation shapes whose experience counts, which questions get asked, and how the answers are read. When those decisions are made with the people a program serves, the evaluation measures what matters to them and earns the trust it needs to work. The exercises here are low-cost and realistic for a small community program. None of them needs a research budget.

Start here

What co-design means here, and why it matters

Co-design means sharing power with the people a program serves. They help shape the evaluation rather than only answering its questions. That is a real shift. In a lot of evaluation, professionals decide what to measure and people are asked to fill in a form. Co-design moves some of that deciding to the people whose lives the program touches: what is worth knowing, which questions are fair to ask, what the answers mean, and what should be done with them.

The digital tools on this site are built to support that, not to stand in for it. The clarify worksheet, the domain and indicator pickers, the Evaluation Tool Builder, the study design builder, the interview guide builder, the consent checklist, and the analysis guide are all best used to record a decision a group has already talked through. A form filled in alone by one staff member captures one person's view. The same form filled in to record what a group agreed captures a shared one. The exercises below sit in front of each tool so the conversation happens first and the tool stores the result.

Two practical habits make this work. Spread the work across several short sessions rather than trying to settle everything in one long sitting, because people think better with time between meetings and because no single meeting can hold every voice. And bring the right people in early: people with lived experience of the program, the connectors and link workers who do the day-to-day work, the partner organizations involved, and, where the work touches a particular community, members of that community and, where appropriate, Elders. Who is in the room is the first design decision you make.

Co-design in practice

Each section that follows pairs a short rationale with at least one named exercise you can run, and ends by pointing to the tool the exercise feeds. Treat the tools as the place your group's decisions are saved, exported, and shared, after the talking is done.

Setting up

Who to involve, and how to set up the sessions

Good co-design starts before anyone sits down. A few choices about who you invite and how you host shape whether the work is genuine or only looks the part.

Who to invite

  • People with lived experience of the program. Current and past participants, and where it fits, family or carers. Their experience is the expertise the evaluation most needs.
  • Connectors and front-line staff. The link workers and connectors who know how referrals, follow-up, and the realities of the work actually play out.
  • Partners. Referrers, community organizations, and funders who hold part of the picture or part of the data.
  • Community members and, where appropriate, Elders. Where the program serves a particular community, people from that community help keep the work grounded and accountable to it.

How to host it well

  • Compensate people for their time and expertise. Lived experience is a form of expertise, and unpaid input from people who have the least is not fair. Offer honoraria, gift cards, or another agreed form of recognition, and cover real costs like transport and care.
  • Make sessions accessible. Use plain language, offer interpretation where it is needed, help with transport, pick times that suit participants rather than office hours, and provide food. Small things decide who can take part.
  • Create psychological safety. Agree how the group will work together, make clear there are no wrong contributions, and give people more than one way to speak, including writing, drawing, or talking to one other person first.
  • Share decisions, not just input. Be honest about what is open to the group and what is already fixed. If you gather views and then decide everything yourselves, people will know, and the trust will not return easily. Show how their input changed the outcome.
Working with Indigenous communities. Where the evaluation involves First Nations, Inuit, or Métis communities or their data, follow the community's own protocols and Indigenous data governance, and let the community decide. For First Nations data, the recognized standard is the First Nations principles of OCAP, which stand for ownership, control, access, and possession. OCAP is a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre. The principles hold that First Nations own their collective information and decide how it is collected, used, and shared. Begin from the community's terms rather than fitting the community into this toolkit.
Step 1 together

Co-designing your focus and program logic

Before you choose anything to measure, the group needs a shared picture of what the program is for and what it is hoped to change. This is the program logic, and reaching it together means the evaluation starts from a common understanding rather than one person's mental model. The exercises here surface what people actually value about the program and turn that into a small number of questions worth answering.

Exercise: Journey of a participant

Who: participants, connectors, partners Group size: 5 to 12 Time: 60 to 75 min Materials: long paper roll or wall, sticky notes, markers
  1. Draw a horizontal line across the wall: first contact on the left, life after the program on the right.
  2. Ask the group to map a participant's journey along it, one sticky note per moment, in their own words. Start with people who lived it, then let connectors and partners add their view.
  3. At each moment, ask two questions and capture the answers above and below the line: what is happening for the person, and what does the program do here.
  4. Mark the points where people felt something change for them. These are the moments your evaluation should try to see.
  5. Stand back together and notice what the program is really doing across the journey, in plain language, and write a one-line shared description of its purpose.

Feeds: the "Clarify what you want to learn" tool.

Exercise: If this program disappeared

Who: participants, connectors, community Group size: 4 to 10 Time: 45 min Materials: sticky notes, two wall spaces, dot stickers
  1. Ask the group, one idea per sticky note: if this program disappeared tomorrow, what would be lost, and for whom?
  2. Put every note on the wall, read them aloud, and let people add notes that others' answers prompt.
  3. Affinity-group the notes: move them around until similar ones sit together, then name each cluster as a theme in everyday words.
  4. Give everyone three dot stickers and ask them to mark the themes that matter most to them. This shows where the group's priorities sit without anyone having to argue for them out loud.
  5. Using the top themes, draft two or three shared questions the evaluation should answer, written as plain questions a participant would recognize.

Feeds: the "Clarify what you want to learn" tool.

Step 2 together

Co-designing which domains to study

The framework offers more domains than any one program should try to measure. Choosing which ones to study is a values decision as much as a technical one, so make it with the group rather than for them. A card sort lets everyone weigh the domains together and see where agreement and disagreement actually lie.

Exercise: Domain card sort and dot-vote

Who: participants, connectors, partners Group size: 4 to 10 Time: 50 to 60 min Materials: one printed card per domain, three labelled zones, dot stickers
  1. Print one card per domain, each with the domain name and a short plain-language definition. Read any unfamiliar ones aloud so everyone shares the same meaning.
  2. Lay out three zones on a table or wall: must measure, would like to, and not now.
  3. As a group, place each card in a zone, talking through why as you go. The talk matters as much as the final placement.
  4. When every card has a home, give each person a small set of dots and ask them to prioritise within the "must measure" pile, so a clear shortlist rises to the top.
  5. Write down the shortlist and a one-line reason for each, so the choice is recorded and can be explained later.

Feeds: the "Choose your domains" tool.

When the group disagrees. Disagreement is information, not a problem to smooth over. If a domain sits between "must" and "not now", ask what would have to be true for it to move, and who is feeling each pull. Often participants and staff weight things differently, which is worth naming. If you cannot resolve it, you can carry a domain as a smaller, lighter measure rather than dropping it, or revisit it after a first round of data. Record the disagreement rather than hiding it.
Step 3 together

Co-designing the indicators

Once you know the domains, you choose how to measure each one. Shortlisted measures should be reviewed with the people who will answer them, because a measure that reads well to a researcher can feel confusing, intrusive, or simply too long to the person in front of it. Two questions carry most of this review: would you be willing to answer this, and does it make sense to you?

Exercise: Read it back, then pilot it

Who: a few participants, a connector Group size: 3 to 6 Time: 45 to 60 min Materials: printed shortlisted measures, pens, a simple comment sheet
  1. Hand out the shortlisted measures exactly as a participant would receive them, wording and all.
  2. Go question by question and ask the group: is the wording clear, does it use words you would use, and is anything confusing or easy to read two ways?
  3. For each item, ask about comfort and burden: would you be willing to answer this honestly, and does it feel like too much to ask, on its own and added to the rest?
  4. Check that each measure respects dignity. Flag anything that feels intrusive, judging, or like it assumes the worst about the person, and decide together whether to reword it, move it, or drop it.
  5. Then pilot the draft with a few people who were not in the room. Time how long it takes, note where they hesitate, and fix what trips them up before any wider rollout.

Feeds: the "Choose your indicators" tool.

Step 4 together

Co-designing the study design

The study design is the shape of your evidence: who you compare to whom, and when you measure. It is easy to treat as a purely technical choice, but it carries real consequences for participants, such as whether they will be contacted again months later. A short, honest group conversation keeps the design both feasible and acceptable.

Exercise: What claim, what is feasible, what is acceptable

Who: connectors, partners, a few participants Group size: 4 to 8 Time: 45 min Materials: a flip chart with four headings
  1. Write four headings on the chart: the claim we need to make, what we can realistically collect, who holds the data, and what participants are comfortable with.
  2. Under the first, agree the strongest honest claim the evaluation needs to support, for example describing change over time versus showing the program caused it.
  3. Under the second and third, list plainly what you can gather without straining staff or participants, and which organizations hold which pieces of information.
  4. Under the fourth, ask participants directly how they feel about practical points such as being contacted for a follow-up, and how, and when. Let their comfort set the boundary.
  5. Pick the most honest design that fits inside all four columns, and note any tension between the claim you want and what is feasible or acceptable, so the trade-off is on the record.

Feeds: the study design builder.

Step 5 together

Co-designing the systems-level evaluation

Interviews with people around the program explain how it works, where it strains, and whether it can last. Both the choice of who to hear from and the questions you ask them are stronger when the group makes them together, because the group knows which voices and which questions actually matter to the understanding it is after.

Exercise: Stakeholder map and question build

Who: connectors, partners, coordinators Group size: 4 to 8 Time: 60 min Materials: a large circle drawn on the wall, sticky notes, markers
  1. Draw the program at the centre of a circle. Place the people and organizations connected to it at distances that reflect how close they are to the work.
  2. As a group, decide whose perspective you most need to understand the system, and mark a realistic handful to interview rather than everyone.
  3. List what the group genuinely wants to understand from these conversations, such as how referrals flow, what makes the partnership hold, or what threatens it.
  4. Turn each thing you want to understand into one or two open questions, in the group's own words, and check each reads as something a real person could answer.
  5. Group the questions by topic and order them so an interview would feel like a conversation rather than an interrogation.

Feeds: the interview guide builder.

After the data

Member-checking and sharing results

Co-design does not stop when the data is in. Before findings are finalised, bring them back to the people who took part and to partners to check that the interpretation rings true. This is member checking, and it catches readings that the numbers allow but the lived reality does not support. The group then co-decides what is shared, with whom, and how, including how any stories are told and consented.

Exercise: Does this ring true, and what do we share

Who: participants, connectors, partners Group size: 5 to 12 Time: 60 to 75 min Materials: draft findings in plain language, sticky notes, dot stickers
  1. Present the draft findings in plain language, without jargon or final polish, so people engage with the substance rather than a finished document.
  2. For each main finding, ask whether it rings true to people's experience, and capture where it does, where it does not, and what is missing.
  3. Revise the interpretation in light of what you hear before anything is treated as final. If a finding and the lived account disagree, say so honestly rather than choosing the tidier version.
  4. Decide together what to share, with whom, and in what form, weighing what would help and what could expose or misrepresent anyone.
  5. For any story or quote, confirm the person consents to that specific use, remove identifying detail, and let them see how their words appear before they go anywhere.

Feeds: the analysis and reporting guide.

To hold onto

Co-design principles

The exercises change with the step, but a few principles run through all of them. Keep these in view whichever tool you are about to open.

  • Share power. Let the group make real decisions about the evaluation, and be honest about what is open and what is fixed.
  • Reciprocity and compensation. Recognize people's time and expertise, pay for it where you can, and give something back rather than only taking input.
  • Start early and go at the group's pace. Bring people in before the design is set, and spread the work across short sessions rather than rushing it in one.
  • Accessibility and inclusion. Remove the practical barriers, plain language, interpretation, transport, timing, food, and care, so the people most affected can actually be in the room.
  • Honour data sovereignty. Where Indigenous data is involved, follow the community's protocols and the First Nations principles of OCAP, and let the community decide.
One last thing

Co-design is ongoing, not a one-time consultation. The point is not to collect views once and move on, but to keep deciding alongside the people a program serves, from the first conversation about what to learn through to how the results are shared. Use the tools on this site to hold what your group decides together, and come back to these exercises each time a new decision is in front of you.