The origin of co-design is first traced back to the ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ traditions of participatory research. The ‘northern’ tradition of Kurt Lewin (1948) promoted empowerment and social equity through action cycles as means of work that was ‘with’ or ‘by’ marginalised groups rather than ‘to’, ‘on’, or ‘for’. The ‘southern’ tradition from Freire (1970) had origins in emancipatory theory and posited that people should be active in determining their own needs and solutions, as full participants in any form of inquiry. At the core was the philosophy of inclusivity and agency of the group of focus in the process of inquiry and not as the focus of the inquiry. The participatory co-operative design tradition of Scandinavia emerged from this background in technology and information system projects during the 1970–1980s. The projects incorporated a politically based desire to increase democracy within the workplace and promote inclusion of the workforce in the design processes of the computer systems utilised by their organisations (Bødker et al., 2000; Gregory, 2003). This work from Scandinavia is regularly cited as the origin of the term ‘co-design’ and the evolution of experience-based co-design (EBCD). Initially developed and piloted as evidence-based design within a UK health service design project, EBCD has become the participatory design method of choice for healthcare quality improvement.