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This paper summarises the co-design model utilized throughout 2020–2022 by WeatherBlur, a community-based citizen science project. Project leaders and teachers working in classrooms across multiple states collaborated to develop iterative instructional practices for classroom implementation and professional development to support teachers’ use of the program. Participants received necessary support and training to facilitate their ongoing success as the project evolved and grew. External evaluators tracked the planning group’s co-design process, collecting data on the research-practitioner partnership and the ways their input impacted the project’s development over time. During the final year of the project, the planning group reflected upon their work and identified five criteria that emerged as successful elements of this co-design process. 1. Creating a culture of trust, 2. Time and patience, 3. Foundational knowledge and deconstruction for understanding, 4. Mutually beneficial collaboration, and 5. Commitment to engagement and flexibility. We present a full explanation of these five criteria, including how the WeatherBlur team developed and nurtured the associated behaviors and strategies. This set of takeaways is applicable to many contexts, and this paper provides insight for future co-design models seeking to replicate a development process that utilizes collective resources and input from a range of collaborators.