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Teaching Design Students the Art of Co-Design Facilitation with a Custom GPT

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Co-design is increasingly recognised as a participatory design approach that values collaboration with non-designers. However, teaching novice design students the interpersonal and improvisational skills needed for co-design facilitation remains a pedagogical challenge. This study explores the use of a customised Generative Pre-trained Transformer (custom GPT) as a support tool to help students prepare for facilitating co-design workshops. Over five weeks, 20 Master of Design students engaged with our custom GPT, which was designed to act as a co-design facilitation assistant. Data was collected through 80 student reflections and 6 group interviews. Findings show our custom GPT supported students in structuring their ideas and clarifying the purpose of their co-design activities. It offered scripts, timelines, and data collection suggestions tailored to our client brief. Students valued its availability, iterative feedback, and conversational style, often describing it as a mentor, friend or teammate. While some noted limitations in output quality and technical constraints, many felt more confident and better prepared for real-world facilitation. Our tool helped bridge the gap between theory and practice, encouraging deeper conceptual engagement without replacing student creativity. This study highlights the potential of GenAI tools in design education while acknowledging the continued importance of real-world co-design facilitation experience.

keywords: co-design; custom GPT; customisation; teaching assistant; workshop facilitation