Co-designing with young people

Student voices are important in the design of health and wellbeing infrastructure. Being young does not automatically mean being fit and healthy especially in low socio-economic areas. The ability to share public space and support services is essential to wellbeing at any age. Co-designing with young people provides opportunities to include their perspectives.

Infrastructure development is increasingly being used as a way to support the wide-ranging health and wellbeing needs of target communities. But few projects directly involve children and young people with other stakeholders as key contributors to decision-making.

Four children are in an open space with buildings in the background. They are jumping in the air and holding hands.

Children and young people have increasingly complex health and wellbeing needs and there are insufficient spaces and services to meet demand. Researchers at Queensland University of Technology tackle this issue by involving children and young people in the design of a wellbeing infrastructure project.

Place-based approaches refer to connecting infrastructure decision-making with the needs of a local community. It takes a cross-sectoral view of the interrelated infrastructure and amenity needs of a place, and identifies how these should be delivered.

A group of young men and women are standing together outside a coffee shop. They are wearing warm clothes and holding mobile phones.

Community hubs

Community hubs are typically multipurpose places that often include health and other community services. In most cases this is both appropriate and cost-efficient. However, few projects directly involve children and young people in the design process.

The research project involved high school students, teachers and other stakeholders in designing a new community hub. This hub is to be co-located at a high school in a community with high health and wellbeing needs.

Co-design and participation

Inclusive co-design with and for children and young people requires support to participate and keep them interested. There are four key factors: Space, Voice, Audience, and Influence:

  • Provide safe and inclusive spaces for views to be expressed
  • Give support and information for expressing views
  • Those in authority must listen to the views shared
  • Views must be taken seriously and acted upon by those with the power to influence or make decisions.
A work table is filled with paper and folders and a woman is cutting a piece of paper with scissors. It looks like a group of people are working on a design.

The article outlines the methods and provides illustrative examples of the students’ views and ideas. Feeling connected to the space was the overarching concept agreed by all stakeholder groups. The diagram taken from the research paper shows the four functions of the hub: community, health, social, and preventative health.

A diagram from the paper. It has four overlapping ovals with a fifth in the centre labelled as The Hub. The others are community function, Health Service Function, Social Function, and Preventative Health Function.

The co-design process revealed the essential nature of the social function – something not previously considered by the organisations involved. The process also provided an opportunity to “flesh out” what the social function might entail.

The title is, Co-designing place-based co-located health and wellbeing infrastructure and services with high school students, educators, and health service providers.

From the abstract

This research involved working with high school students, teachers, Guidance officers/School Counsellors, and other stakeholders. The project involved co-designing a new Community Hub co-located at a high school in a high-priority community .

We describe the co-design processes for engaging children and young people and adult stakeholders in the ideation and design phase of infrastructure and service development. The object is to support the health and wellbeing of a high priority community with high health needs.

The key insights pointed a way forward for the next stages of infrastructure and service delivery development. it also led to the development of several visual depictions of the complexities of stakeholder interests. Meaningful engagement of potential future users of place-based integrated health and wellbeing services enables responsive infrastructure designs that meet future needs of both target communities and service providers.

Participation and co-creation in healthcare

A special issue on co-creation in healthcare research has several related open access articles. The first is Practices of Participation and Co-Creation in Healthcare: A Workshop Report.

Abstract

Participatory research in the health sector is fraught with obstacles. In particular, choosing appropriate methods to involve the heterogeneous stakeholders in the health system can be difficult. Not only are time constraints and hierarchies between professional (and non-professional) healthcare actors a challenge, but also dealing with patients who may have different physical and psychological limitations.

Accordingly, not all qualitative methods are applicable to all stakeholder groups. Limitations such as speech or visual impairments can make it difficult to participate in focus groups or design workshops. With a workshop at the European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work in 2024, we discussed experiences and lessons learned with participatory methods in the health sector. The workshop showed how different challenges were dealt with and thus opened up a space for reflection on participatory projects.

Other articles in this issue look at using visual metaphors, ideation, and challenges in participation of vulnerable groups in design processes.