We Designed For Youth! - Designing a Youth Participation Platform

I. Why this Project Existed? - An Introduction

This overview post provides the big-picture story of the project and serves as a gateway to the individual prototype pages, exhibition materials, and final documentation.

This studio began from a different belief: that youth participation is not a one-time activity, but a designed ecosystem, shaped by trust, belonging, creativity, and real pathways into influence.

In collaboration with the Alliance for Youth-Led Futures (AYLF), our cohort was invited to prototype a visionary participation platform that could support youth leadership across borders, connecting creative expression, wellbeing, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Importantly: this was not a simulation. Our work was developed in dialogue with a real partner ecosystem and designed for visibility beyond the classroom, including potential international stages.

AYLF’s own manifesto sets the tone for what this platform must hold: imagination and collaboration, mutual care and collective wellbeing, art and culture as bridges, and courageous co-creation across generations and geographies.

we weren’t only building features, we were designing conditions.

II. A Course Built like a Real-World Design Lab

The studio was structured as an iterative “team of teams” journey: we began in functional research teams, moved into thematic concept clusters, and later formed integrated co-creation teams for prototyping and final delivery.

Across the semester, we worked through a full design-to-impact pipeline:

Research → synthesis → concept development → prototyping → testing → storytelling → public exhibition + handover.

III. What We Learned Early

A major shift happened when we stopped treating youth engagement as “getting users” and started treating it as designing trust.

1. Invitation beats activation
   We learned to design invitations - small, warm, low-pressure entry points, instead of overwhelming people with “missions,” systems, or long onboarding. This reframed power: participation is something youth enter by choice, not something institutions extract

2. Belonging comes before contribution

   Belonging isn’t vague, it’s built through visible representation, safe-to-fail first actions, micro-circles of trust, and low cognitive load. If
   the first moment feels intimidating, youth leave.

3. “Messy” is not unprofessional - it’s accessible

   Over-polished platforms can feel like performance stages. We learned that youth often want permission to experiment, try, and return without being judged. “Messy is beautiful” became a design principle, not just a vibe.

4. Micro-moments matter more than big campaigns

   We focused on the 30-second window of first contact, the first action, invitation, and the moment of expression, and recognition, because those moments decide whether trust grows or collapses.

1. Starting with Listening

Before forming clusters or developing concepts, we immersed ourselves in research. We explored participation frameworks, youth mental health realities, digital engagement models, and existing youth-led initiatives.

What we quickly realized was this:

Youth do not lack ideas. They often lack structures that feel safe, accessible, and genuinely supportive.

This insight became the foundation of our work.

Research shifted from being a requirement to becoming a lens. It taught us to look beyond “solutions” and instead ask: What systems are currently shaping youth experience? Where do they create pressure? Where do they leave gaps?

2. Learning Through Collaboration

One of the strongest learning moments emerged through interdisciplinary exchange. Working with business students forced us to confront feasibility, scalability, and implementation questions early on.

At first, this created friction. Creative ideas met structural constraints. But over time, that tension became productive.

We learned that impact requires both imagination and structure. A strong idea is not enough; it needs framing, positioning, and strategic thinking to survive outside the classroom.

3. Designing Within a Real Ecosystem

Working in alignment with the Alliance for Youth-Led Futures meant that our prototypes were never purely speculative.

AYLF connects a broad network of youth organizations and advisory bodies, including initiatives such as the WHO Youth Council. Knowing that our work existed within this ecosystem changed how we approached design decisions.

4. The Clusters that form Youth Participation

Try Out the Prototypes from here!

START HERE - A Wellness Platform for Youth

Start Here is a youth-designed wellbeing platform created for moments when life feels overwhelming but not necessarily “serious enough” for therapy. It offers a calm, pressure-free digital space to pause, reflect, and reconnect through creative, low-effort interactions such as mood sliders, brain dumps, micro-actions, and community challenges.

Link to Start Here's Prototype

WIP - Work In Progress

Across the world, young people are struggling with mental health yet most receive no professional support. Waiting lists are long. Therapy is expensive. Stigma is real.

So many turn to the one place that’s always open: AI.

WIP (Work in Progress) is a guided wellbeing toolkit designed by youth, for youth. It combines:

• Gentle daily reflection prompts
• Flexible journaling formats
• Energy-based check-ins

MURALS - The World is Your Canvas

In an era of hyper-connectivity, young adults are reporting record levels of loneliness and self-doubt. Social media often pushes us toward „individual performance,“ where every post is judged by likes and algorithms. MURALS is our response to this-a collaborative web platform designed for collective creation, shifting the focus from „me“ to „us.“

The Open Frame

The Open Frame is a living prototype that explores how creative expression can be supported without being controlled. It responds to a growing gap between creative desire and the systems that make creativity visible, valued, and impactful systems that often prioritize polish, metrics, and branding over process, experimentation, and presence.

Link to The Open Frame's Prototype

Traces

A low-barrier creative expression platform where youth share imperfect moments in under 60 seconds, receive peer responses, and collectively discover that creative participation transforms into agency.

Plan Gen

PlanGen bridges the gap between „wanting to help“ and „knowing how.“ It is a digital platform that empowers youth to launch their own initiatives through smart management tools, AI assistance, and expert mentorship helping young creatives turn ideas into action without the fear of failing out loud.

Link to PlanGen's Prototype

Layer

Layer is a youth-centered innovation ecosystem designed to transform early stage ideas into sustainable, self-led studios. Positioned as a structured yet adaptive launchpad, Layer supports young entrepreneurs, career changers, and aspiring studio founders in navigating the complex journey from ideation to leadership.

5. What We Learnt from Each Cluster

What The Wellbeing Cluster Taught us
- A core learning from this cluster was that wellbeing is not separate from participation. It is part of the infrastructure participation depends on. The meaning of Wellbeing can differ to each youth, so the platform needs to be catered carefully.

What The Creative Cluster Taught us
_- _If participation feels like performance, youth disengage. If it feels like permission and play, youth return. Keeping users engaged can be simple, and doesn't always have to be competitive. 

What The Empowerment Cluster Taught us
- True empowerment often depends less on motivation and more on accessible structure, it is important for platforms to provide this sense of accessibility to the Youth.

What The Innovation Cluster Taught us
- Innovation doesn't just come from a platform that supports ideation. It is scaffolding that helps young people stay with their ideas long enough to grow them

6. The Dessau Design Show: A Moment of Exchange

The Dessau Design Show marked a turning point.

Until then, the work lived inside studio spaces, working sessions, and critique rounds. The exhibition transformed it into dialogue. Presenting to peers, faculty, and AYLF-connected stakeholders introduced a new layer of accountability. Questions became sharper. Assumptions were challenged. Visitors did not only see final prototypes, they encountered the research, the tensions, and the intentions behind them.

The Design Show also marked the beginning of structured documentation. Capturing photos, materials, and reflections allowed us to preserve not only outcomes, but the process that created them.

This wasn’t just a final presentation - it was a credibility test:

Could we communicate our value in under 30 seconds?

Could the audience understand the user journey?

Could the visitors see where they fit and what they would do?

We learned that public presentation is not the end of a project. It is a test of clarity. If you cannot explain why something matters, the prototype loses strength.

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7. What This Work Contributes (beyond one semester)

This project produced prototypes - but more importantly, it produced a repeatable approach to designing youth participation:

• start with ecosystems, not assumptions
• design belonging before asking for contribution
• build micro-invitations, not complex onboarding
• make recognition peer-driven and visible
• prototype fast and test what matters
• measure belonging, agency, and expression - not just traffic

8. Where We Struggled

Our first challenge wasn’t creativity. It was clarity.

Early concepts were ambitious and full of potential, but they often sounded like “a platform for everything.” We could explain our intentions, but not always our value fast enough. In feedback sessions, the same questions kept returning: Who is this for, exactly? What is the first step? Why would a young person come back tomorrow?

We also struggled with a tension that stayed present throughout the semester: designing for youth without reproducing the pressure youth already face. Many existing systems reward polish, performance, and constant output. When our prototypes started to feel too structured, too optimized, or too “app-like,” we had to slow down and redesign the experience to feel safer, lighter, and more human.

Another challenge was designing within a real ecosystem. AYLF is not a single user group, but a network of partners with different roles, needs, and capacities. That forced us to confront questions beyond the interface: What needs to be hosted, moderated, or maintained? What belongs with partners, and what belongs with youth? What can scale without becoming a bureaucracy?

These struggles became productive. They pushed us to simplify, define, and focus. Instead of building more, we learned to sharpen: clearer entry points, smaller first steps, and stronger stories that made the “why” understandable in seconds.

9. What This Project Taught Us

10. What AYLF can take Forward!

I. Continuation potential

Not every prototype should be scaled in the same way. Some are best suited for immediate piloting, others for integration into existing partner programs, and some as long-term infrastructure ideas.

Strong short-term pilot potential

These concepts have low barrier to entry, clear value, and can be tested quickly within an AYLF partner context.

1. Start Here (Wellbeing)

Continuation strength: clear use case (“overwhelmed but not therapy”), low-pressure interactions, strong fit for youth audiences.

Next step: run a limited pilot with one partner group over 2–4 weeks and measure return rate, emotional usefulness, and trust signals.

2. WIP (Wellbeing)

Continuation strength: modular toolkit structure; can be deployed as a resource layer inside existing youth programs.

Next step: publish as a structured toolkit first (without full platform build), then test which modules youth actually reuse.

3. Traces (Creative)

Continuation strength: simple ritual, fast contribution loop, peer response creates belonging, low production pressure.

Next step: pilot as a time-bounded “creative sprint” community format (e.g., a 10-day challenge) with facilitated prompts.

Strong integration potential into partner ecosystems

These concepts become powerful when embedded into partner workflows rather than standing alone.

4. PlanGen (Empowerment)

Continuation strength: bridges “idea → action,” can integrate mentorship and partner expertise, aligns with youth-led initiative support.

Next step: build a prototype “initiative pathway” with partners (templates, mentorship roles, lightweight governance) and test with a small cohort of youth initiative starters.

Strong long-term infrastructure potential

These require more investment but could become durable backbone structures if AYLF chooses to build ecosystem-level infrastructure.

1. Layer (Innovation)

Continuation strength: addresses a structural gap (scaffolded innovation journeys), strong ecosystem fit with mentorship + peer learning.

Next step: treat as an “operating model” first. Pilot one Layer “studio cycle” (mentored cohort + milestone progression) before building a full platform.

2. The Open Frame and
3. MURALS (Creative)

Continuation strength: strong cultural value and community-building; supports expression without performance.

Next step: test as recurring program formats (prompt cycles, hosted canvases) before committing to a large-scale platform build.

II. Transferable Systemic Insights: What Applies Beyond This Project

Even if specific prototypes change, several systemic insights are widely transferable to future cohorts and partner programs.

• Participation grows where pressure drops
• If systems feel performative, youth disengage. When contribution feels safe, lightweight, and human, youth return.

• Belonging precedes contribution

• Young people contribute more when they first experience recognition, representation, and a low-risk way to enter.

• Micro-actions beat “big engagement”
• Small, repeatable actions create habits. Habit creates continuity. Continuity creates impact.
• Ecosystems scale better than products

The strongest direction is not “one perfect platform,” but a modular ecosystem of formats and pathways partners can host. This reduces dependency on a single tool and increases long-term resilience.

11. What the Next Phase could Look like!

If continued, a realistic next phase could focus on validation rather than expansion:

• Select 2–3 prototypes from both of the pilot cycles 
• Define partner hosting roles and guardrails
• Test with small groups for 2–6 weeks
• Measure return rate, perceived usefulness, and trust signals
• Use pilot learnings to decide what deserves scaling and what should remain program-based rather than platform-based

This approach keeps the work strategic, feasible, and aligned with the AYLF ecosystem’s real capacities.