#14 To Be a Good Human: Co-Design, Two-Way Learning, and Redistributing Power

What does it really mean to do co-design well — and when might stepping back be more powerful than stepping in?

Jessie Robinson is a proud Wiradjuri man and founder of Mawang Consulting. In this conversation, he challenges us to think differently about co-design — not as a process or framework, but as a fundamentally relational practice rooted in power redistribution.

Jessie shares how First Nations ways of being and doing have shaped his approach, and why he believes communities often already have the solutions — they just need the resources and space to act on them. We also get into the messier side of this work: having hard conversations with commissioners, sitting in discomfort, and what it actually looks like to practise two-way learning rather than just talk about it.

We cover:

• Co-design as power redistribution, not methodology
• When to resource what already exists rather than design something new
• Indigenous knowledge systems and what practitioners can learn from them
• The step before 'discovery' — sitting and sharing space with community
• Collaboration vs competition in how work gets commissioned
• What two-way learning means in practice

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Resources Mentioned

• Mawang Consulting — Jessie's First Nations owned consultancy
• Beyond Sticky Notes — KA McKercher's book on co-design
• KA McKercher — co-design practitioner and author