Designing and Developing Technologies with Young People Living through Precarity

[mozfest-bot]

[ 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

[xynosis]

Proposer here - to clarify (as there was no space to on the form) - whether or not a stipend will be required is dependent upon the number of young people who wish to attend, which we will only be able to ascertain when we know if the session will go ahead or not. If anything is unclear please feel free to contact!

[chadsansing]

Compelling proposal - how might you invite audiences from other spaces to the session if it was held in the Youth Zone, @xynosis?

[tinagoetschi]

@xynosis can you please clarify your statement "whether or not a stipend will be required is dependent upon the number of young people who wish to attend" Just to let you know, usually, if a session is accepted, a stipend may be provided to a facilitator of that session I think your session would be great and could be very powerful thanks Tina

[xynosis]

@chadsansing A think a key way of inviting audiences from other spaces would be to emphasise how important the experiences of young people living through precarity are to the Open Internet. If we're actively designing with these young people in mind, a lot of the traditional blockades fall away - how can young people living through precarity access proprietary systems, when money is often limited? What does it mean to configure the Internet in such a way that young people - who don't necessarily have wifi or phone credit - can access it, and what new ideas concerning decentralisation could this create?

In terms of practical things - I'd intend to make a huge deal of it on Twitter in particular, emphasizing the above. I'd also make a general push that just because something is in a Youth Zone, it doesn't mean that it's just for young people (unless this is the intent and we've misread!) - but is also a great way to learn about the problems facing young people and to reconsider our own work in light of those.

Let me know if you don't feel that answers the question!

[xynosis]

@tinagoetschi Hi Tina! Along with the key facilitators (myself and a member of Barnardo's), we also intend to bring some young people who are working on a project about this from Barnardo's along to facilitate/act as experts by experience. There are some funds already available from both Open Lab and Barnardo's own budgets, but if every young person in the project wanted to come, for example, it may be the case that some financial assistance would be needed.

If it's a black and white issue, I think this can say 'no stipend requested'. Was just trying to acknowledge the shades of grey - sorry if that made it more confusing! I just wanted to emphasize a lack of stipend wouldn't be a barrier to running the session but that it would likely be stronger with it. Hope that helps! :)

[chadsansing]

Thank you for sharing that thinking here, @xynosis.

[emrysgreen]

Hiya @xynosis would you be able to let us know a bit more about the scheduling format of this session? Have you got presenting time? Discussion time? The number of potential demos etc? Just wanting to know how interactive and what size of space would need to accommodate.

[xynosis]

@emrysgreen Thanks for your question, sorry it's been taking so long for me to reply, I finished my Master's last Friday so it's been a bit hectic!

Scheduling wise:

1. Young people living through precarity will present some things about their experiences to provide context (10-15 minutes)
2. A 60 minute hackathon where attendees will work in mixed groups to develop a prototype or some kind of response to the young people's experiences
3. 15-20 minutes of presenting prototypes and Things to the group with some constructive feedback from the young people facilitating (and offering the opportunity to take these further in collaboration with Open Lab, Newcastle University and Barnardo's)

The session will basically be as interactive as possible - the young people will be acting as experts throughout the session and so will provide critique and feedback throughout as to how they feel group's emerging ideas respond to their life situations. We're hoping for a very open atmosphere, basically.

In terms of the size of the space - any size could work but something that could incorporate several tables for group work would be ideal. Ideally a space that could facilitate a minimum of 20 attendees - allowing for 5 groups of 4 or 4 groups of 5. The workshop and hackathon style means it can scale to any size though, so anything could fit.

Does that answer your questions fully? Again, sorry it's so late!

[chadsansing]

Thank you for this information, @xynosis!

[chadsansing]

Closing this as @xynosis can no longer attend MozFest.