Discovery
Recruitment
Session Planning
Building Relationships
Implementation
EvaluationImplementation
Phase 5
Transforming Plans into
Action
Strategies for successful sessions and design sprints!
Let’s get this show on the road! It’s time to bring your Youth Fellowship to life through the Implementation Phase. Your planning has laid the groundwork, and now it’s the moment to dive into the process of co-designing with youth. Messages have been sent, calendar invites accepted, outcomes are crystal clear, and you’re ready for action. In this phase, we’ll guide you through the practical steps of bringing your fellowship to life with ideas for running your sessions and visualizing your design sprints!
Objectives
- Run sessions with ease
- Choose tools and processes that allow for maximum youth input and engagement
Orientation and Session Kickoff
All Youth Advisory groups – from Youth Fellowships to Focus Groups should start with an intro where youth can engage with one another and understand the expectations and goals.
Interactive Session Design
Sessions should have multiple ways for youth to engage. Plan to incorporate digital tools, breakout or discussion groups and reflection time.
Timeline of Design Sprint
Set a timeline for accomplishing your goals and then run your sessions!
Establish feedback loops
While implementing, you may find you need to adjust an outcome, adjust a future session or change the way you are engaging with youth. Use feedback loops on your team and with the youth.
- Implementation
Step 1/ Orientation and Session Kickoff
Initiate the fellowship with a thorough kickoff session designed to establish the foundation for the entire program. Conduct a detailed orientation to familiarize participants with the overarching objectives, expectations, and co-design frameworks. Use this opportunity to cultivate a positive and inclusive atmosphere that sets the tone for an engaging and collaborative learning journey. Additionally, consider integrating the principles of the Human-Centered Design process as a co-design framework into your design sprints, placing a strong emphasis on empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing (or iteration) for an equity-focused experience.
- Checklist
Participant Interests and Skills
Take into account the preferences, interests, and skills of the potential youth participants. Consider conducting surveys or interviews to understand their areas of expertise and interest, helping you tailor the group structure to maximize participant engagement. This approach ensures that the selected format resonates with the youth audience, fostering enthusiasm and commitment to the co-design process.
Set Orientation Objectives
For BUILD Fellows, we try to host a bi-annual 2-3 day orientation to prepare them to work with multiple partners. If you are seeing to establish a Youth Advisory group working with just your team or organization, then consider hosting 1 60-90 minute session that is tailored to the specific goals of your fellowship.
- Develop a well-organized agenda that clearly defines the objectives, topics, and activities planned for your session or each day of the orientation.
- Clearly define the learning goals and outcomes, ensuring that each session contributes to preparing youth for the upcoming design sprints. Having a well-defined agenda helps participants understand the flow of the orientation and the relevance of each session.
Plan Interactive Workshops and Skill-Building Sessions
Based on what programs the youth have participated in before, and the age and stage of maturity the youth are at, you’ll want to consider how to incorporate interactive workshops and skill-building sessions that equip youth with the necessary tools and knowledge for effective participation in design sprints. Here are some examples of what that may look like
- If your students will be working with product development teams, cover key elements of the design process to help them understand where in the cycle the product is and to help them innovate beyond that!
- If your students are giving feedback on strategies, plans, or broader issues in education, consider using things like True and False binary questions to push some friendly debate. Give them time to discuss in small groups and come back to share out. Have them find images related to the topic at hand and then share why they picked images. All of these will help you uncover nuance and creative thinking.
- If your students will be conducting interviews in the community, consider helping them draft questions, practice in small groups and refine before you send them out and about.
For all youth, we believe that finding ways to teach them about equitable leadership practices, defining cultural responsiveness and community cultural wealth are helpful as they become critical thinkers, posing new ideas and strategies for how to improve education.
Additionally, check out designchallenge.build.org, which gives an overview of the design thinking process in student-friendly language and can serve as a guide.
Introduce Co-Design Principles and Human-Centered Design
Provide an introduction to co-design principles and the Human-Centered Design process. Familiarize participants with concepts such as empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and iteration. Use real-world examples and case studies to illustrate the application of these principles. Ensure that youth have a solid understanding of the frameworks that will guide their collaborative efforts and gain tangible skills that will benefit their future career path!
- Implementation
Step 2/ Interactive Session Design
Plan and design interactive sessions that align with the goals of co-design and youth engagement. Incorporate diverse activities, discussions, and hands-on exercises to ensure active participation. Digital Tools that are helpful to help youth engage deeply. You will most likely be running 60 or 90-minute sessions, and during those sessions, you want to generate artifacts that help you better understand the unique experience and perspective of those you are engaged with.
- Checklist
Participant Interests and Skills
Take into account the preferences, interests, and skills of the potential youth participants. Consider conducting surveys or interviews to understand their areas of expertise and interest, helping you tailor the group structure to maximize participant engagement. This approach ensures that the selected format resonates with the youth audience, fostering enthusiasm and commitment to the co-design process.
Utilize Digital Tools for Enhanced Engagement
Explore digital tools that enhance engagement and interaction during sessions. Platforms such as collaborative online whiteboards, interactive polling tools, or virtual breakout rooms can facilitate participation and generate valuable insights. Integrate these tools thoughtfully to complement the objectives of each session.
- Jamboard: Ideal for collaborative brainstorming, visual idea mapping, and group discussions. Jamboard provides a digital whiteboard platform where participants can contribute ideas in real-time, making it effective for generating and organizing thoughts during interactive sessions.
- Flipgrid: For asynchronous video discussions and reflections. Flipgrid allows participants to record short video responses, facilitating engagement and communication, especially when face-to-face interaction may be limited. It’s valuable for sharing narratives, experiences, and reflections.
- Padlet: Collaborative online board where users can share multimedia content, such as images, videos, and documents. It’s an excellent tool for collaborative brainstorming, sharing resources, and fostering group interactions. You can use Padlet for collaborative projects, idea sharing, or as an additional space for class collaboration.
- StoryboardThat: Specifically designed for creating digital storyboards. Useful for translating ideas into visual narratives, StoryboardThat can be used to visually capture the sequence of events, user experiences, or product designs. It’s a practical tool for conveying concepts in a story format.
- Canva: Visual content creation and design. Canva offers a user-friendly platform for designing graphics, presentations, and visual materials. It’s beneficial for creating visually appealing artifacts for e-portfolios during co-design sessions.
Help Youth Build Portfolios
This is a unique experience for youth. One way to make it more meaningful is to allow them to build a portfolio. Consider integrating an e-portfolio, where participants can digitally showcase their contributions, reflections, and collaborative outputs. This not only enhances documentation but also provides a comprehensive view of the participants’ growth and engagement throughout the fellowship journey.
- Structure activities to generate artifacts that capture the unique experiences and perspectives of the participants. These artifacts serve as valuable insights into the co-design process.
- Utilize digital tools that allow for collaborative creation and curation of artifacts within the e-portfolio for a holistic understanding.
Check out examples of Youth Fellowship portfolios in the resources section.
Engage in Team Building Activities
Dedicate time to team-building activities to foster a sense of camaraderie and trust among participants. Encourage open communication, active listening, and collaboration. Building a strong sense of community during the orientation sets the foundation for effective teamwork during the design sprints.
- Dedicate a minimum of 10 minutes per session to team-building and relationship-centric questions and discussions.
- Model authenticity and vulnerability to build rapport with youth.
- Implementation
STEP 3/ Timeline of Design Sprint
Execute the design sprint by following a structured timeline. Engage participants in ideation, prototyping, and testing phases, encouraging creative problem-solving and collaborative decision-making. Use reflection questions and resources to guide the design sprint.
- Checklist
Participant Interests and Skills
Take into account the preferences, interests, and skills of the potential youth participants. Consider conducting surveys or interviews to understand their areas of expertise and interest, helping you tailor the group structure to maximize participant engagement. This approach ensures that the selected format resonates with the youth audience, fostering enthusiasm and commitment to the co-design process.
Design Sprint Timeline and Phases
Develop a clear timeline for the design sprint.
- Our most effective design sprints for strategy or a deeper understanding of issues within the school or broader community typically take place over 4-6 weeks in 90-minute blocks each week.
- For product design sprints, you may be able to get a lot of input in 90 minutes; if you have several features of products to test, design a 4-8 week sprint with at least 75 minute sessions.
Ensure that participants have a well-defined roadmap, allowing them to understand the progression of activities and the time allocated to each phase.
- Implementation
STEP 4/ Establish feedback loops and regular communication
Regularly gather input from participants to assess the effectiveness of sessions and the overall progress of the design sprint. Be responsive to feedback, adapting your approach as needed to enhance engagement, address challenges, and maximize the impact of the fellowship experience.
- Checklist
Participant Interests and Skills
Take into account the preferences, interests, and skills of the potential youth participants. Consider conducting surveys or interviews to understand their areas of expertise and interest, helping you tailor the group structure to maximize participant engagement. This approach ensures that the selected format resonates with the youth audience, fostering enthusiasm and commitment to the co-design process.
Set-up Ongoing Communication
For the several weeks you are engaging with youth, you will want to stay in contact with them! These youth advisory teams should feel like a blend of having students in a class, being in a community of practice, and being project teammates and colleagues! As you are compensating youth, attendance is expected. High expectations and high accountability should be balanced with the understanding that there are likely other competing factors.
Young people should know how to communicate if and when they are unable to attend a session (i.e., they lose power during a storm, a school event or project was more demanding than expected, a family emergency arises, etc.)
- Send a follow-up summary after the session that reminds them of any assignments or reflections you want them to conduct.
- Send a calendar invite for each session; text them the day-of or day before the session with a reminder of the timing.
- Share ongoing praise, admiration, and gratitude as young people share their experiences, stories, and ideas.
Embrace an Adaptive Approach
Be responsive to the insights provided by participants, and use the feedback to inform immediate adjustments to the ongoing implementation. Flexibility in adapting your approach enhances engagement, addresses challenges promptly, and maximizes the impact of the fellowship experience based on the evolving needs and preferences of participants.
- Implementation
Support Documents
Playbook Phases
Building Relationship
Best practices to ensure you are starting from a foundation of relationship-building
Implementation
Running your weekly (or daily or monthly) groups to capture insights, experiences and stories
Discovery
Building Relationships
Implementation
Recruitment
Session Planning
Implementation
Evaluation