From USAID to The LEGO Group, city governments to private car manufacturers, “co-creation” as an approach to building initiatives and products alongside their eventual users and implementers is generating a lot of buzz.

But at a time when people are using co-creation to mean—well, anything really—how do we make sure we’re not using the term in a way that causes confusion or encourages trendy-but-impractical solutions?

At Reboot we’ve led dozens of co-creation journeys for a wide range of people, including journalists, policymakers, technologists, researchers, and local communities. And so we’ve had ample opportunity to consider, amidst the infinite possible objectives and trajectories, what makes a co-creation journey have integrity? What makes it deliver on the promise that including stakeholders in the design of an initiative will make it better—more effective and more sustainable?

In this episode of our “Buzzwords and Fuzzwords” series, Strategic Designer Corey Chao talks about the “guiding lights” that he uses to design a co-creation process. First, he says, consider who should be in the room, and why. Second, prepare for existing power dynamics. Third, think beyond a single “touchpoint” to the grander arc of the whole co-design process.

Go ahead, give him a listen.