DesignLink: A Model for Co-design

Challenge

Emerging designers often lack structured opportunities to engage with industry during early-stage education. Simultaneously, local businesses face challenges accessing design-led innovation. DesignLink addresses this disconnect by facilitating co-design collaborations between early-stage creatives and Northern Ireland-based organisations.

Approach

DesignLink employed a practice-based, co-design methodology incorporating design sprints, client briefs, peer feedback, and live presentations. This iterative process supported real-time knowledge exchange between students, early-stage professionals, academics, organisations, and businesses, and foregrounded reflective pedagogical strategies in architectural and design education.

Outcomes

Outputs included 11 design briefs, 11 innovative design strategies, and a final showcase event. Outcomes include strengthened academic-industry collaboration, enhanced early-stage creatives portfolios, business-led strategic concepts, and opportunities for further funding applications or commercial development.

Learnings

Participants gained insights into client communication, sustainable design practice, and collaborative innovation. Academic staff identified strategies to better scaffold industry interaction in pedagogy. Businesses reported value in engaging with design thinking, identifying fresh design perspectives and potential talent pipelines.

Impact

DesignLink demonstrably improves design education by embedding live industry engagement, thus enhancing graduate employability and relevance. It creates a replicable model for university-SME collaboration, enabling design- led innovation with economic and social value. The project lays groundwork for future interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral co-design initiatives. A paper is currently in progress on how we can rethink co-design in these contexts.