Becoming a co-designer: the change in participants’ perceived self-efficacy during a co-design process

Perceived self-efficacy is an integral part of a capability set that allows participants to transform design capabilities into the functioning of doing design. However, existing research investigating the change in participants’ perceived self-efficacy during a co-design process is inadequate. Therefore, this paper aims to demonstrate the changeability of participants’ perceived self-efficacy and its changing trajectory in a co-design process. The findings are extracted from a remote co-design project with older people, employing generative toolkits and culture probes, to address loneliness in later life. It has been discovered that the participants who successfully completed the co-design process experienced an increase in their perceived self-efficacy, following a U-shaped model. Furthermore, the depth of the U-shaped curve is contingent on how well the co-design process is designed to align with participants’ embodied knowledge and skills. The findings of this paper address the inadequate discussion of the change in participants’ perceived self-efficacy in co-design methodological literature. The introduced U-shaped model can equip co-design researchers and practitioners with the ability to anticipate and prepare for potential situations arising from changes in participants’ perceived self-efficacy during co-design processes.