What we did
Often when we think of research, we have a typical idea of how this goes — a researcher, or maybe a research team, come up with a research question and methods, and participants are involved during the data collection stage via tests, surveys or interviews to name a few. In The Co-production Project our aim was to do research differently, taking it out of the University space more and into the community. Co-production is a participatory design approach to research that elevates lived experiences, prioritises relationships and shares power. It focuses on including from the beginning the people who are likely to be affected by or benefit from the research.

The Co-production Project set out to explore the use of this approach to research in an Aotearoa New Zealand context, through a case study of women’s health. Along with this, the project also wanted to co-produce with women a library of research questions about women's health that are a priority to women. This project is a joint venture between Te Pūnaha Matatini and Toi Āria, Design for Public Good — both are research groups that strive to carry out community engagement authentically. The three year project began in 2022, and with an almost blank slate it made knowing where to start a bit of a conundrum.

The first year was spent building connections with other people working in the women's health space, developing a core research team with an understanding of each others skills and asking lots of questions. Some of the questions we considered were: 

• Who should be included? Women, people with a uterus, health 'experts'?
• What does women's health mean — is it just gynaecological and reproductive health or is it broader?
• What communities did we have existing relationships with that might be interested in being involved?
• How could we get started, when to get ethics approval we needed to have a plan but to make a plan we needed 'co-researchers' onboard?

In the second year we connected with women across the motu, and built The Co-production Project community. One of the core research team had an existing relationship with a nationwide charity — an affinity group connected by shared values — so we invited volunteers from this charity, who self-identified as women, to have a conversation with us. In a series of 'Cuppa & Cake' sessions across the country. We aimed to create an environment that was safe, warm and welcoming — a bit like sitting around the kitchen table having a chat, rather than a more typical focus group or interview. We had conversations with 80+ women from Tamaki Makaurau Auckland to Murihiku Invercargill about health care experiences, bodily functions and women's lives. From these initial conversations we moved to discussing with the project's community how we could work together going forward, and how to visualise and summarise all the conversations we'd had together.

Our third year has focused on the development of research questions. Connecting with the women in the project either online or in person, we set out to create 100 research questions that could be collated, sorted and refined in order to make a library of questions ready to be researched further. As the third year comes to an end, we are spending time celebrating with our contributors, friends and champions of the project to share what we've created together and showcasing what we've learned with a wider audience.

What we found
Through all these conversations we found that women carry a lot, care a lot and love a lot. To the women we spoke with, women's health is not just about the wellbeing of the individual, but also those around them they have relationships with — parents, children, wider family, friends etc — and they will often prioritise caring for others over caring for themselves.

When we tried to summarise all the conversations into themes, we found this leaned towards oversimplification, and the complexity and nuance of women's health was lost. While we knew what sat behind the themes, as soon as they were described on paper an unintentional hierarchy formed, and the themes appeared to have clear boundaries. To try and capture the complexity in a different way, we visualised the themes as more of a solar system, which each one linked to the others, orbiting closer to some and further away from others but also changing depending on the context.

An unexpected outcome from the project was learning how women appreciated having the time and space to chat about health with other women, learning from and supporting each other. This opportunity to share experiences was valued but rarely found, so to encourage these conversations, we’ve created the “care-full conversations” card deck.

About the methodology, co-production, we found that it is a valuable approach to centering lived experiences, and opening up space for more people to be involved in research. We recognised how easy it is to fall back on default ways of doing research, noticing that when we felt comfortable it was time to pause and check that our current plans aligned with the co-production principles and values. Co-production can require more resources than other methodologies, from more mental and emotional labour by the core research team to more time for building relationships and having deeper conversations through to more funding to cover hospitality and venues for hui, along with Koha for those sharing their experiences. We were prepared for all this, so we were able to cover the resources needed but it could be easy to underestimate what is needed when starting out.

Next steps
As we finalise our library of co-produced research questions, we will be looking for ways to progress these questions. This might look like sourcing funding in order for the current core research team to keep working on these questions, or it might also be looking for other researchers with more appropriate skill sets that could be interested in taking these areas of inquiry forward. A website for the project is being developed as a home for the information and resources that have come for the project. This will also provide a way to remain connected to the project's community as well as extending connections with other interested people, and be a repository for feedback and input into the research questions. We hope that sharing the methods and processes from this project will help other communities within Aotearoa New Zealand to have confidence using co-production for their explorations and expand how research can be done differently.