Trust Before Tactics for Co-Design That Sticks with Callan Rowe

Jessica opens with a Country Acknowledgement and frames the podcast's mission: empathy-driven design for spaces, services, and experiences. She introduces guest Callan Rowe — design consultant, educator, and researcher — highlighting his focus on the "speed of trust," deep relationships, and co-design rooted in lived experience.

Cal traces a non-linear path: from the creative camaraderie of film school to freelancing, then pivoting into motion graphics and a grad dip in communication design at RMIT. At a digital ad agency he co-created an R&D lab exploring early AI and voice tech — creatively fulfilling but ultimately misaligned with his desire for meaningful impact, leading to burnout.

Moving to a smaller strategic design agency, Cal broadens into service design and co-design across health and education. He reframes "strategy" from selling shiny ideas to making the useful compelling, exemplified by steering a client from an AR app to targeted emails and two-way communication.

Frustrated by fast, transactional co-design in agencies, Cal tries a client-side year-long project — valuing the time but feeling buried in bureaucracy. He founds Village Collaborative to work slower and cheaper, build capability, and stay through delivery — offering a spectrum from co-facilitated delivery to "project mentorship."

Cal outlines maturity stages in co-design: early reliance on toolkits vs. later-stage flexibility and in-the-moment facilitation. He cautions against assuming anyone can lead co-design — experience matters to avoid harm and superficiality. He critiques surveys and "Voice of…" projects as often extractive research rather than co-design, and stresses reciprocity and clarity on decision rights.

Cal insists on co-planning upfront — "co-define" — so communities shape the brief, not just the solutions. He builds in a reframing stage post-discovery, especially vital in grant-funded work where deliverables can rigidly pre-define outcomes. He names two common failure modes: projects that are research-only but labelled co-design, and participatory ideas that die due to opaque decision-making.

Beyond being participatory, Cal unpacks the "design" in co-design: a material, iterative practice where problems and solutions co-evolve through making (abductive reasoning). Using a graphic design analogy, he shows how sketching and prototyping help validate and refine both the brief and responses.

Cal contrasts HCD's "user input" with co-design's shared creation, noting how prototyping shifts groups from venting to envisioning. Prompting, "Imagine if it worked — what would that look like?" changes energy, aligns stakeholders, and generates momentum.

Cal references classic definitions of design as moving from current to preferred states, asking, "Whose preferred state?" He reframes "solutions" as "responses" for complex systems, and advocates strengths-based, asset-based community development. Citing Ivan Illich's convivial tools, he questions over-servicing and imagines services becoming redundant as communities regain capacity.

Asked about wellbeing amid the emotional labour of co-design, Cal shares that he prioritises nourishing, non-transactional relationships on projects. His tongue-in-cheek KPI: it's a successful project if a hug would feel appropriate among collaborators — because deep trust reduces the cost of coordination and replenishes energy.

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