City of Casey Co-design Toolkit Final Report

Ice breaker tool-kit to engage youth

Fatina Abdeen Bukhari Adelia Yumnam Singh Naddhawara

Mahanukul

Chen Haw Chien

Published by Swinburne University of Technology, School of Design, 2022.

Printed in Melbourne by Fatina Abdeen Bukhari, Adelia Yumnam Singh, Naddhawara Mahanukul & Chen Haw Chien

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from Swinburne University of Technology.

Declaration of Originality

Unless specifically referenced in the bibliography, the mark and all other material in this book is the original creation of the author.

Copyright Agreement

I agree for Swinburne University to use my project in this book for non-commercial purposes including: promoting the activities of the university or students: internal educational or administrative purposes: entry into appropriate awards, competitions papers; use in research papers or conference presentations as student examples of co-design projects and other related non-commercial activities: as an example for future students on line and face to face and in lectures. In some situations, this may involve repurposing the work to meet the requirement of Swinburne’s use.

I agree to grant to Swinburne a worldwide, non-exclusive, irrevocable and free-of-fee license to use this project produced in DDD60001 in any way for non-commercial purposes.

Signed Fatina, Adelia, Nat, Justin Date 2 / 11 / 2022

Introduction

This project aims to create the City of Casey toolkit as an icebreaker to encourage youth engagement in activities and avoid the awkward feeling that young people have when they join in the activity for the first time. In addition, breaking the barriers between the participants might be the solution to involving youth without involvement in council-related plans for unknown reasons. Therefore, it is in everyone's best interest to resolve the issue and involve the youth in decision-making.

This study will discuss co-design and then go through participatory design, universal design, and user-centered design, and how these various methodologies may help conclude the research project—using co-design as a primary key to evoking youth to participate in decision-making and create a new community.

Defnition

Participatory design

As part of participatory design, target audiences and stakeholders must actively engage in the design process. According to Sanders and Stappers (2008), for the designer to provide valuable experiences, they need to be aware of different people's levels of creativity. The shift in design research from a user-centered approach to co-designing is altering the landscape of design practice.

Co-design

Co-design is a participatory approach to problem-solving in which members are included as equal partners during the design phase. In urban planning, architecture, software development, product design, and many other fields, co-design design research focuses on how end-user interaction can enhance design outcomes (Taffe, 2015). The projects helped users by allowing them to use and develop skills instead of restricting or automating their work tasks.

Universal design

There are multiple definitions of universal design in the international community. For example, the Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University defines universal design as "the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design” (Connell et al., 1997). Regardless of the wording, the goal is profound: we can make our human-made world as accessible and usable as possible. (Story, M. F. 2001).

User-centered design

In user-centered design, a designer is focused on the thing being designed, looking for ways to ensure that it meets the user’s needs. The roles of the researcher and designer are distinctive yet interdependent. The user is not a part of the team but is spoken for by the researcher. (Sanders, E. B. N. 2002).

Problem Defnition

In the City of Casey, the median age in 2021, 34, is four years younger than the Victorian median age of 38, according to the census. Nearly one-third of Casey's population, or 130,522 inhabitants, are under 24. However, this cohort is the least represented when Casey conducts surveys. The decision-making processes used by the council that could affect the lives of young people need to be made more transparent to them. New engagement models must be developed to meet the community's shifting expectations and demands.

Design tools & Best practice case studies

Our goal is to create a toolkit for the City of Casey, which may assist the City of Casey in learning more about engaging youth in their community. The youth in Casey have access to various events and activities, so why is there a lack of youth participation in community events?

The youth generation is becoming more diverse in their thoughts, interests, and preferences. We found two potential problems within the current youth-engaging methods with some further research. First, some activities offered by the City of Casey may not be compatible with the youth's schedule. Second, Teenagers might be nervous attending events alone with strangers and new people.

Social Media Activism and Identity Development

The Listening Guide is an approach to youth interviews aiming to acknowledge "our power to listen, name, and distort what others have to say" (1990). A walkout to protest education budget cuts was organized by a 17-year-old using social media and texting. When people misrepresent an interview as our own, it causes justifiable rage. Justin's story is an efficient and effective social media in time and geography. It may not replace the main tasks of communication and participation in active activity projects, but it may control the main task of the building. The purpose of relationship-based representation is to restore hope in the power of young people to change the world.

YMCA (The Y, Young Men’s Christian Association)

YMCA (Young Men Christian Association) is a youth organization with more than 64 million receivers in 120 countries. YMCA aims to make Christian beliefs real by building a healthy body, mind, and spirit. It provides the venue, crucial skills, and seed financing for teenagers to take the lead in tackling the world's concerns. YMCA is committed to creating opportunities for adolescents to drive change in their neighborhoods.

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Using AR, Gaming Techs, and Transmedia Storytelling to Develop and Co-design Local Cultural Heritage Experiences

The KLUB project codesign activities employ multiplatform storytelling techniques and gaming components in a series of children's books enriched by augmented reality and other media, such as board games. The selection of the multimedia reflected the intention to be as inclusive as possible, engaging both digital and non-digital users and fostering collaboration across generations.

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Participatory Governance of Smart Cities

The CONSUL application — is open-source, e-government software used by 33 countries, 130 institutions, and over 90 million citizens globally. This engagement system contains four significant elements: debates, proposals, participatory budgets, and voting. Based on the above democratic processes, the authority will evaluate an initiative's legal, competence, and economic feasibility and decide whether to adopt or reject the proposal.

Case Studies

How can the City of Casey toolkit be an ice-breaker to encourage youth engagement in activities?

By conducting several co-design workshops, the design team aims to create a toolkit to engage young people, highlight their personalities and interests, and allow them to discover new connections with the community, moreover, form new ones.

The DO part of the map focuses on the engagement of the youth and

Workshop 1

Create Casey Character

This activity evaluates how the users perceive each of their wards, how the community center appears to them, and what personas they embody. After completing a personality test, participants choose from three parts of pre-drawn fictional characters to create a character. The character does not have to be human; it could be an animal, a superhero, or any imaginary character.

Casey Community Centre

This activity asks participants to plan a day in the community center with a list of events. This activity aims to identify which event is most and least popular in what they are doing. Participants can also write activities they would like to add to the schedule.

Cast Casey Choice

A board comprises different topics such as technology, policies, sports, and mental health. Participants can vote on the categories that interest them or would like the council to be aware of.

Findings

The first activity collects data about the participants' personality traits and a small number of their characteristics. However, not all data collection was successful, with the confusion about the survey's intention. Therefore, it has some flaws, but connecting with the participants was fun and interactive.

For the second part of the toolkit, we found that people's favorite events are the Market, Hiking Trips, Learn a New Dish, and Movies. Over half of the people prefer to start their first event at 11 AM. 55% of people prefer the events to be held on Saturdays. There are suggestions to change the day planner to a weekly planner.

The Cast Casey Choice toolkit contains various exciting topics to which participants would love to bring awareness. The most prominent topics are social activities, public spaces, policy-making, and well-being. In the end, we felt a bit overwhelmed with the data we got and were unsure how it could help us.

-A little souvenir like pins after the workshop can be a great icebreaker between participants.

-The flow between the workshop's activities is vital for a streamlined experience.

-It is beneficial to interact more with the participants between or after activities and provoke more conversations.

-In the early stages of co-design, do not be afraid to try out radical ideas or have everything perfectly designed.

Pilot Workshop

Improvement

After the first workshop, we tried to provoke more conversation between the participants and us and make the activities more straightforward so that the intentions were clear.

What is in my bag? & Interest Flag

"What is in my bag?" is a co-design activity that asks participants to share their personality traits with others. Each person may list at least three personality traits they carry and pass on to others or what personality they believe they exhibit. Later, they stick on the board and have a little conversation.

"Interest flag" is an activity where participants use a sheet of paper to explore their interests and write them down on washi tape. Moreover, we can understand the participant’s interest by the proportion of the tape. After the two activities, the participant will be asked which criteria they will be interested in using for a mix &match with people for future events.

Voting Board

This is an A3 board with four questions and an A/B answering method. After they answer by putting a sticker on the board, we will try to ask some follow-up questions.

Findings

The "What's in my bag?" activity found that everyone has different personality traits and shares, and no two people are alike. The discovery might assist the council in deciding how to approach and involve young people in the community. One of the participants said, "Personality is not a big factor when it comes to talking and making friends".

The " interest flag" activity shows that while some participants have specific interests, most have similar interests. Having participants write down their interests will help us choose activities that may interest them, as well as making new friends with similar interests and personalities. Also, knowing the interest may help the council to add more activities based on the interests of the youth.

The findings from the "Voting Board" activity showed that the participant is aware that they have a community center in their ward but is not sure where to find one because the information is not clear and put out on display, such as in newspapers or subscriptions for people to know about. Most participants have never participated in any events held by the community center. A quarter of the participants would like to communicate with the community about minor concerns and ask the council to be more aware of them.

Workshop 2

Direction

The workshop aims to help teenagers avoid an uncomfortable feeling about going somewhere for the first time by creating a toolkit that acts as an icebreaker. Youth have low engagement in council activities if their peers do not join and it affects how they want to do the activity. In this workshop, the activities are scoped by using a diagram from simple to complicated and from informative to non-informative.

CCCharacter

The activity aims to be the visual representation and persuade people for the workshop and can be a tool for participants to feel connected with the activity.

CCControl

This activity is set on a diagram as a non-informative yet simple activity. The purpose of this activity is not to get the data but to be another approach to breaking down the barrier to start talking with other people. At the same time, they draw a picture and continue a conversation between participants after.

CCCharisma

This is an activity set to be informative but a little complicated to complete. Participants scan a QR code to do a personality test asking about their character, interest, and motivation. They generate six personality types: helper, creator, lover, explorer, innocent child, and spiritualist. This activity aims to match participants based on their personalities and interest to create a chance for people to start a conversation in the workshop. After they finish, they will get a pin that has a shape that is a symbol of the personality type with a blank ring around the pin. Participants have to color the ring using a color code from the categories of their interests.

CCCode

The last activity is "CCCode." this activity is a complicated but informative activity inspired by a scavenger hunt. "CCCode" aims to experiment with an approach to a diverse group of people and get their interest from their suspicious instinct. The process of this activity is the following:. Participants scan a QR code around the university campus, which represents the order of the English alphabet, so, from all the clues, they will get a password "FNAJCD". Then the clue will direct them to a building which has poster with our workshop's time.

Finding

From the second co-design workshop, we found out that every activity works very well in engaging people and making them start a conversation. In the CCCharacter part, participants enjoyed building their avatars from the personality survey they took. CCControl was a successful way to make people start talking while drawing something as a team. In CCCharisma one of the participants says she loves the pin with a color-coded ring around it that we gave her after she did the personality test. This activity allowed her to converse with others with similar personality types and interests.

Recommendation

We have concluded and developed several approaches that the City of Casey's council should use to increase engagement with the youth group, considering the data we collected from three different workshops and our findings.

The first recommendation is to increase the excitement for the participants who attend the events or activities by providing them with prizes. Rewarding the participants makes them happy to enjoy the events knowing they are given something in return when participating.

The second approach is to create a broader and more innovative range of activities for the youth group to enjoy and be interested in participating. Having a more open field of activities will encourage the youth to join if knowing that they are interested.

The final strategy is to design a game with various difficulties for the youth to enjoy solving together and provide hidden hints about the City of Casey to help young people better understand their community and council decisions.

- Adding a sense of excitement by providing prizes for participants

- A broader and innovative range of activities

- The council can develop stages with varying degrees of difficulty and clues that provide information about the City of Casey, increasing the youth's understanding of their city and council decisions.

Final Tool-kit

There are four activities for the toolkit we fnalize, which can each be an icebreaker activity.

CCControl

Firstly, "CCControl" is the activity that lets participants join and start conversations as a team to complete the mission. It is the simplest and easiest activity to get people to start a conversation.

CCCharacter

Next, "CCCharater" is an activity that helps get more engagement from young people to make them enjoy making their avatars and build a conversation around the character they have created.

CCCharisma

The third activity is "CCCharisma." This activity is a way to make people feel connected with the activity and begin to lower their barriers by seeing that they have the same personality and interest in the same things.

CCCode

Lastly, the "CCCode" is an activity that the council can use to promote the council activity; moreover, the activity can make people start talking to each other like a rumor, and it may persuade participants to join the activity at the community center from this activity.

Don’t Scan

FNAJCD

Conclusion

At the beginning of the research, there was an assumption that young people would rather avoid council-related activities. However, these activities affect them significantly. In contrast, the problem is that they need to feel a sense of belonging and connection with the council. Moreover, the way the council approaches teenagers needs to be more attractive.

Our study from several co-design workshops demonstrated that teenagers want to join and participate in the council activities precisely when their voice has been heard. However, there is still a barrier between youth participation and the council's activity. This research offers a toolkit with icebreaker activities for the council to do before the co-design activities with young people to break down the barriers. The ice breaker also increases engagement and easy access and makes young people feel more connected and willing to share information. Additionally, the toolkit allows people to enjoy socializing with others interested in the same things to join, share, and exchange their knowledge to create a new healthy community.

Simone Taffe and Sonja Pedell

Adelia Yumnam Singh, Naddhawara Mahanukul, Fatina Abdeen Bukhari, Chen Haw Chien

The City of Casey Innovating Community Youth Engagement- Co-Design Toolkit By Swinburne University School of Design and Architecture.