Pragmatic co-design methodology: a tale of university and retirement village friendship

Abstract

Co-authored by academic staff and older adult community members, this paper reports on an incidental and pragmatic co-design model grounded in a round table friendship-informed approach. Interdisciplinary academics met with residents of a proximate retirement community, sharing open discussions with no agenda, including improving engagement between the two communities. The ensuing co-designed programme of outreach activities was of myriad mutual benefits: the retirement community benefited through opportunities for meaningful engagement via inter-generational knowledge-sharing, social connection, and access to expertise and equipment, whilst the University benefited across Learning and Teaching, Research, Engagement, and Commercialisation sectors. This pragmatic co-design approach described resulted in equitable contributions to knowledge generation, exchange, and translation in an interdirectional way. We argue that future research can adopt such an approach, exhibiting potential across all forms of community engaged research.