Establishing partnerships with the community to support design tasks

• A personal approach was important for our initial communication. It was essential to let the business know how it might benefit from an involvement.
• When dealing with an outside organisation we found that we had to hold regular meetings – to make sure that their people knew how the project was progressing and to ensure clear communication.
• We found that people in the community were willing to provide great assistance but we had to negotiate practical arrangements and accept that sometimes we had to compromise.
• Don't push too hard. We knew that we were not a part of the organisation's core business.
• We had to state exactly what we needed – and our community experts needed to know the objectives of the project