Customer Co-Design

Customer co-design is the practice of bringing real customers or end users into the problem-framing and solution-design process so the team builds around evidence rather than internal assumptions.

Key points

  • AWS recommends involving the customer's customer where possible during working-backwards engagements, especially when defining the persona and problem [src-017].
  • In the SAP Sports One example, SAP, TSG Hoffenheim, and AWS worked together to focus the roadmap on match analysts who spent too much time manually reviewing and tagging game footage [src-017].
  • Co-design helps narrow a broad opportunity space into a specific customer, pain point, metric, and proof-of-concept target [src-017].
  • Journey mapping and pain-point analysis are used to find where manual work, bottlenecks, time loss, cost, or operational friction are highest [src-017].
  • The method often finds one key persona whose improved workflow creates downstream value for several other stakeholders [src-017].

Related entities

  • AWS — uses customer co-design in Digital Innovation / PACE engagements

Related concepts

Source references

  • [src-017] AWS Events — "Working Backwards | How to Build Like AWS" (2026-02-24)

Robin Cartier perspective

This page is part of Robin Cartier's working AI knowledge graph: a practical research layer for production AI, recommendation systems, experimentation, GEO, and agentic web readiness.

The useful next step is to connect this concept back to applied product leadership and operating models.

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