This research explores creative imagery shared between co-designers during crossdisciplinary design collaboration as a theoretical framework for co-design studies, which we term “collective imagery”. Collective imagery is a shared working structure of design concept and consists of associated design elements such as facts, insights, ideas and concepts, often too partial and complex to envision and enact collaboratively. We carried out experimental workshops to identify
co-design tools and processes, which aim to externalise and structure collective imagery for designing. We develop co-design tools to allow co-design process to unfold itself without adhering to traditional design development process: collective imagery board, skit improvisation and complexity weave. We trace over time patterns of co-design activities by using the collective imagery board to visually depict the diverse structure of design concept. We discover co-design
process in a creative emergence cycle of activities such as: inspiration, deconstruction, association, clustering, threading and emergence. We show structuring collective imagery as core co-design activity, of which a coherent conceptual structure often suggests a coherent design solution. We conclude the notion of collective imagery as a theoretical framework to consider when development co-design tools to engage co-designers with diverse creative processes.