Designing and Developing Technologies with Young People Living through Precarity

[ UUID ] af2fbb4d-dcca-46f2-ab15-a32340fa7295

[ Session Name ] Designing and Developing Technologies with Young People Living through Precarity [ Primary Space ] Youth Zone [ Secondary Space ] Digital Inclusion

[ Submitter's Name ] Kieran Cutting [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] Open Lab, Newcastle University [ Submitter's GitHub ] xynosis

[ Other Facilitator 1's Name ] Mezz Lewis

What will happen in your session?

During this session, attendees will be sharing and learning about some of the problems facing young people living through precarity, including care-experienced young people and young people with experience of homelessness. Young people with experience of these situations (who will facilitate the session) will share some of their experiences before all attendees will start to work together in small groups to create a response to these experiences. Responses may include prototypes of Things or technologies which address some aspect of the young people's experience, methods of designing with these young people in mind, or suggestions for key values and features that technologies and designs must work with.

What is the goal or outcome of your session?

Attendees of this session will leave with a greater understanding of the problems faced by young people living through precarity in the UK, and the session will particularly highlight the barriers to technological inclusion that face these young people, inviting a reconsideration of what technology is and is for. Young people who attend this session will develop links with the technological and design communities which may be of benefit to them, and professionals who attend the session will be encouraged to rethink how their practices include and exclude young people living through precarity. In addition, this session will form some initial prototypes that can be developed in conjunction with Open Lab and Barnardo's.

If your session requires additional materials or electronic equipment, please outline your needs.

The session should only require office supplies, such as paper, pens and post-it notes, and any technology that participants choose to bring with them. If accepted, this session will make clear that participants may bring anything into the session that they feel might help them construct useful responses to the issues framed by the young people attending.

Time needed

90 mins