Using participatory design to create tangible futures for children and youth
Strategy + Design
Informing decisions that support child rights now, and in the future
The Challenge
UNICEF Innocenti’s mission is to ‘work with and for children and young people to address their most pressing challenges’ in a wide range of areas like poverty and protection, engagement and the environment, and equity and inclusion. The global landscape and local contexts in which these challenges exist continue to shift and evolve. However what remains constant are youth, their voices, and their drive to create a future they need and want.
By elevating youth voices with all their uniqueness now, in authentic, compelling, and actionable ways, stakeholders such as UNICEF and its partner organizations can make more informed choices to shape our collective trajectory to more preferable outcomes in the future.
The Outcome
A set of materials—scenario descriptions, persona cards, and day-in-the-life narratives of a diverse group of fictionalized youth—created by young people themselves, transforms complex information to help drive decisions in the best interest of those UNICEF aims to serve.
Character-based, evidence-driven, and future-forward to the year 2050, these materials can inform decisions and inspire action in many applications, including upcoming publications with UNICEF and an exhibit designed for World Children’s Day at the Museum of the Future in Dubai.
“This initiative, developed collaboratively with Artefact, Dubai Future Foundation, and UNICEF, puts young people at the heart of reimagining the future of childhood by ensuring that their voices and perspectives directly shape the narratives we share.”
Bo Viktor Nylund
Director, UNICEF Innocenti
A multi-faceted approach to understanding children’s needs
Artefact, in collaboration with UNICEF and the Dubai Future Foundation, combined participatory design methods, foresight techniques to project futures, and human-centered design principles resulting in relatable representations of children’s lives that can inform decisions on how to support them in the future.
UNICEF and the Dubai Future Foundation convened youth to engage with these methods, which were integrated into a framework called the Experiential Futures (XF) Ladder. The XF Ladder guides leaders and stakeholders through immersive and interactive steps, transforming abstract future scenarios into more tangible and understandable experiences, ultimately fostering a deeper understanding and engagement with the subject matter.
Three complementary methodologies to illuminate the future
1
Human-Centered Design ensured narratives were centered in the universal needs of children.
Need statements captured the shared, expansive needs of children in the domains of play, learning, and domestic life. These statements shaped the various narratives of children from diverse regions and led to personas that communicated their unique challenges in clear and inspiring ways.
2
Strategic Foresight revealed the future impacts of intersecting trends.
Super Wheels, an adaptation of a commonly used methodology called Future Wheels, provided a way to gather compounding effects from identified megatrends. These secondary and tertiary effects were coded under 6 categories – societal, technological, environmental, economic, political, and values. We then analyzed how these secondary and tertiary effects intersected within each scenario using causal layered analysis (CLA). This framework helped us consider headlines, systemic causes, worldviews, and metaphors for each scenario.
3
Participatory Design throughout the process centered young people’s perspectives to shape the work.
Key to the overall process were two workshops designed and facilitated by UNICEF’s Youth Foresight Fellows and involved participants from UNICEF’s Global Youth Network to develop the scenarios and day-in-the-life narratives. We structured the workshops and coached the Fellows to provide teachable moments for the youth so they were able to gain new skills from participating. In total, 50 youth participated throughout the process.
Participants from UNICEF’s Global Youth Network were divided into teams with others from their same geographic region. Each team was assigned a placemat with a child persona representative of their region and a future scenario.
Teams were tasked to describe objects in the child’s backpack and answer questions about the child’s day to provide the team with deeper insights into the objects, thoughts, and activities of the children of the future.
“I was really amazed by this initiative to allow young people around the world to express their deep knowledge about the lives and suffering of children. I acquired more experience and knowledge thanks to this workshop.”
Participant from UNICEF Youth Global Network
Amplifying Impact
The actionable artifacts created by this participatory process can bring crucial visibility and advocacy for the rights and well-being of children now and in the future.
The Dubai Future Forum was first to leverage this work and raise awareness about the power of the platform. With such a prominent and forward-looking venue, the project’s message reaches a wide audience, including policymakers, educators, and the general public, inspiring action and positive change. The interactive nature of the exhibit further enhances engagement and fosters a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing children in 2050.
This increased visibility will serve to amplify the project’s impact, ensuring that the needs and interests of future generations remain at the forefront of global conversations and decision-making.
What we delivered
+ Future Scenarios + Personas + Day-In-the-Life Narratives
Exploring GenAI’s impact on team dynamics when in real-time brainstorms
The Challenge
Figma, the leading collaborative design platform, wanted to understand how collaboration and team dynamics change when generative AI becomes a member of the team. We conducted an experiment to take a look.
Generative AI has begun to work its way into people’s everyday workflows, and we’re starting to see how it can augment individual tasks and productivity. But in practice, much of our work is collaborative. When AI “enters the chat,” it has the potential to impact not only productivity and outcomes, but also the synergy between teammates.
The Outcome
We found that generative AI has a big presence in the collaborative room, bringing in energy that shakes up team dynamics considerably, especially for teams with less generative AI maturity. Specifically in our research, we outlined four potential impacts and made recommendations to help teams incorporate generative AI into their workflows for best results.
We authored an insights report of the findings Figma published publicly, as well as joined their team in a livestream to the Figma community to share highlights from the research and participate in a panel discussion with a Q&A.
From the research
“The speed with which [GenAI] can ideate or create something tangible with just a few keywords is really powerful. I feel like if someone is able to harness that power, they can go really far. But if they don’t know how to harness it, the horse is just gonna kick them off and feel overwhelming.”
Research participant
Observing teams to learn how AI impacts collaboration.
We recruited real teams and observed each as they completed two tasked-based challenges. The first challenge each team completed as they normally would. In the second, teams were instructed to involve generative AI in any way the team saw fit.
With 1-on-1 breakouts in between challenges and follow up in-depth interviews with select participants to reflect on their experience, we were able to get a combination of quantitative observational data and qualitative data to bring into analysis. Additional interviews with subject matter experts helped us situationalize the data in broader trends, contexts, and potential futures.
Our process
Recruit real teams
We conducted a series of challenges with existing teams that worked on products, including design teams at mid- to large-sized companies and design students at the University of Washington. Each team member already had some familiarity with using AI, as well as using FigJam, Figma’s white boarding tool, where we conducted the challenges.
Observe task-based challenges
We tasked teams with solving two ideation prompts. First, we asked them to complete the challenge according to their typical ideation process. Then, we asked them to use generative AI at some point, however they saw fit. Prompts encouraged the teams to ideate around generating ideas such as “envision a new conference experience in the era of remote working” or “imagine a way to help people better manage their digital clutter.”
Follow up in-depth interviews
We matched the number of facilitators in each challenge with the number of participants. This enabled us to pull each participant into a breakout room 1-on-1 with a facilitator to get quick real-time qualitative reflections on the challenge. After the team session, we followed up with select participants for in-depth interviews to hear more about the experience of working with AI on the team.
Talk with experts for broader context
Alongside the observational research with teams, we also spoke with five subject matter experts in industry and academia. Experts were able to share perspectives on AI related to their work and research in foresight, machine learning, designing with AI, product design, and digital humanities. These interviews helped the working team contextualize findings, insights, and recommendations and ensure good storytelling in the final report.
GenAI had a big presence in collaboration.
Groups spoke an average of 40% more, and made 22% more artifacts in their FigJam boards in the challenge using AI.
While genAI had the potential to jumpstart brainstorms, its outsized energy risked drowning out quieter voices on the team. People found the energy exciting and inspiring, yet chaotic and overbearing at times. Below are a few of the risks and opportunities from the research.
Risk
Moving faster and falling prey to shortcuts.
Teams shared that the technology quickly ushered them into generating solutions, often at the expense spending time considering and defining the true problem that needed to be solved beforehand.
Risk
Going in different directions and falling out of sync.
Teams were able to generate more artifacts overall and carry ideas further as individuals. A higher quantity of ideas made coming together as a team and aligning on one cohesive solution a challenge, putting team cohesion in jeopardy.
Opportunity
Onboarding AI to the team like a new team member.
One team had developed norms around when individuals were to use generative AI, and those use-cases rolled up to their teams’ strengths and values. Setting expectations for what and when to use AI helped the team divert many of the pitfalls and chaos other teams encountered in the challenges. Doing so enable to them to use generative AI to prop them up when they encountered a gap or obstacle no one on the team could fill.
Opportunity
Looking at AI’s contributions like a teammate’s: unfinished.
Most participants perceptions of AI fell into two buckets: bossy and definitive, or unfinished and suggestive. While the former found themselves frustrated with lower quality ideas, the latter were inspired by what they saw as initial kernel or spark—something to get them thinking, like a teammate’s first idea might.
Get all of the insights in the full research report
Grab your copy the takeaways and insights from our research report in collaboration with Figma. The report was originally published in Figma’s “Reports and Insights”. The Artefact team presented key insights from the report on Figma’s “Inside the Minds” livestream.
Empowering people living in extreme poverty with co-design and AI
Design + Tech + Impact
Co-designing generative AI-powered experiences enables meaningful and broad impact
The Challenge
Established in 1971, Opportunity International is a non-profit focused on helping families living in extreme poverty build sustainable livelihoods and access quality education for their children. Through their CoLab, they work with innovators across the globe to conceive and create innovative solutions for specific communities of use ranging from teachers to micro-entrepreneurs and small holder farmers. With powerful ideas rooted in deep understanding of their communities of use, they needed a holistic approach to user experience and compelling, cohesive design to translate those ideas into professional apps ready for the real world.
The Outcome
Artefact partnered with Opportunity International to transform innovators’ ideas into viable app concepts. We guided in-country innovators through a pitch process. For those ideas that moved forward we created a systematic user experience, including a branded design system, and supported the implementation of fully functional prototypes powered by AI, resulting in a set of innovative solutions ready for field testing, further investment, and ultimately shipping to communities.
Supporting innovators within communities of use across the globe
Opportunity International works with innovators to introduce human centered design processes and principles, so that those living closest to the communities of use have the skills and tools they need to envision and develop their ideas. Utilizing specific user personas and incorporating the latest AI advancements, this CoLab effort has helped generate over 200 ideas.
As the design partner for Opportunity International’s CoLab, Artefact worked with a select number of these innovators via co-design to help them turn their ideas and knowledge about the specific needs and circumstances of those they intended to support into viable app concepts and experiences that were then used to gauge their impact potential for further investment.
We then supported these innovators in pitching their ideas at a global idea summit, creating hero images of their concepts, as well as efficiently scaling our impact as a partner by utilizing generative AI to create supporting illustrations depicting the usage contexts of each innovator’s concept.
Turning ideas into tangible products
To help each innovator make a compelling case for their concepts, we created a nimble UI design system based on Opportunity International’s brand. The design system contains key elements such as colors and controls that help make the app concepts not just believable and polished, but also helps them stand out.
Farm record keeper
eFarmbook helps collect and manage data on farming activities, which can be used by farmers to monitor progress and offer tailored advice. The tool facilitates communication and knowledge sharing between farmers and agricultural experts, improving productivity and decision-making in farming practices.
Farm scenario planning
A tool designed to help farmers initiate positive changes in their agricultural practices. It provides farmers with practical guidance on setting achievable goals, implementing effective strategies, and tracking progress.
Classroom lesson planner
A digital tool designed to support teachers by streamlining administrative tasks through AI and providing resources that help create a more dynamic and responsive learning environment. By integrating teaching aids and assessment tools, it empowers teachers to focus more on personalized instruction and student development.
School fee loan advisor
A digital platform aimed at connecting skilled workers with job opportunities in various industries. It serves as a bridge between employers and job seekers by providing a database of skilled professionals and facilitates communication between the two. The tool also offers resources for skill development and certification, helping users enhance their employability.
School development assistant
A generative AI-powered tool designed to assist schools in enhancing educational quality and outcomes. It provides a comprehensive platform for monitoring and evaluating school performance, offering data-driven insights and recommendations for improvement.
Financial planning and advice
Designed to aid in personal and professional development, this platform provides micro-entrepreneurs with resources for self-assessment, goal setting, and tracking progress in various areas of life.
Skills training for kayayei
This AI tool was designed to provide entrepreneurial opportunities, information and strategies on feature phones. By analyzing data such as location, target market and environmental conditions, it provides tailored recommendations to enhance efficiency and productivity.
“Working with Artefact was critical to our ability to deliver polished ideas as part of our CoLab innovation process. The team quickly added value, working globally with our innovators on tight timelines in an agile, collaborative way. Their partnership elevated our work, delivering polished ideas on time and on budget. We’re excited to keep collaborating as we bring these ideas to life.”
Paul Essene
Senior Director Product & Technology Innovation, Opportunity International
From engineering prototype to polished, testable MVP apps
After down-selecting from the initial app ideas to a smaller number of concepts to bring forward into prototyping for further refinement and evaluating both technical feasibility as well as value testing with users in Africa and India, we supported the development of the prototypes by honing the user experience architecture, interaction models, and adapting to technical constraints, so that the engineering partner was able to focus on implementing the generative AI and chatbot functionality without having to spend time on a polished UX.
Working closely with Opportunity International, we turned the rough engineering prototypes which were utilizing large language model (LLM) AI platform technologies into apps that not only had coherent interaction models, but also optimized for reusability of user interface components and patterns to ensure efficient implementation of highly usable prototypes for testing and sharing with Opportunity International stakeholders.
Designing for collaboration between humans and AI
Shaping the interaction between the user and the underlying generative AI and chatbot technologies was an important focus. Rather than a conventional AI system where the only user interaction is to formulate text prompts, we created a collaborative and highly contextual interface in which the user first specifies parameters for what they already know, such as the subject for a lesson plan, the different levels and types of learners in the class, and the overall duration of the class. The generative AI then fills in the gaps which the user may not know or have time to create, such as highly personalized activities for each learner. Furthermore, two different types of AI can be used, specialized for either revising the generated lesson plan, or for helping the teacher understand more about the subject or specific learning activities. Thus, these apps create a collaborative workflow between human and AI where the AI augments the human rather than replacing them.
Generative AI, like many emerging technologies before it, has a trust problem rooted in users not understanding how it works and fearing the unknown. These tools can quickly spread misinformation, hallucinate, and amplify distracting informational noise that decreases digital wellbeing and reduces trust in systems that don’t authenticate outputs.
In partnership with the design editors at Fast Company, we explored a variety of contexts in which users may feel anxiety when encountering synthetic media content generated by AI. Our team explored potential UX solutions that could give users a greater sense of agency when interacting with synthetic content as it shows up in their lives.
The Outcome
We started by looking broadly at how AI-generated content might show up in our physical environments, such as in outdoor advertising claims, and how we might provide more transparency around such content at a glance.
We also considered how the integrity of synthetic content might be significant in a highly-consequential moment, such as when making a personal financial decision, when that is supported by a human advisor who uses an AI tool to provide recommendations.
Lastly, we considered how the line between what’s real and what’s synthetic can become blurred with generative AI, exploring how digital provenance and filtering tools might provide users with more agency and insight into controlling the flows of information in their field of view.
Creating a standardized label for AI-generated content
We explored how a simple, recognizable icon could help people to quickly discern between AI-generated, human-created, and AI-human hybrid content. Drawing inspiration from other rating systems such as film and TV ratings, we aligned on a simple three-grade system of codes: AI for 100% AI-generated content, AI-H for some balance of both AI-generated and human-created, and H for 100% human-created.
A simple blending of colors brings the ratings to life with two opposing hues: red for human—signifying our human vitality—and blue for AI— a commonly associated color with trust. When mixed together, the colors create a purple hue, which signifies the blend between human and AI-generated content.
The rating system is designed to provide recognizable and repeatable affordances for informing users at-a-glance. It’s usable across both digital and physical contexts, presenting as digital tag on devices or as QR codes in physical media. Details within the ratings provide users with progressive disclosure of the content’s origin and authenticity.
“[Users] want to maintain control over their experience. We were interested in the idea of giving users more affordances to have that sense of control, because that feeling of trust is not being garnered in the same way it is with a human.”
Authenticating media messages in our everyday environment
While synthetic media is showing up extensively on social media and in other digital spaces, we took our envisioning a step further and considered a future where AI-generated content is more prevalent throughout our daily information ecosystem, particularly in our physical environment.
Imagine arriving at a bus stop and seeing a digital display ad for a local internet service provider. While a glowing review of the service may seem inviting to a potential customer, the real story may be different. An AI system could present a dubious reframing of the training data of customer reviews, which may obfuscate the real story about the service.
By placing the standardized AI-H label on the advertisement, the ad’s audience has immediate context about the synthetic nature of the marketing copy. Scanning an associated QR code allows a user to instantly pull up information about the AI-compiled copy to see details about the sources.
A little more digging reveals that the internet service quality turns out to be quite poor despite how it is framed by the AI. Providing this type of transparency is critical to helping users feel more empowered in a landscape of increasing misinformation that could potentially be magnified by unethical or poorly-trained generative AI systems.
Providing clarity and assurance in consequential decision-making
Beyond marketing messages, generative AI tools can be used in back-end processes that support service delivery by humans. We were interested in exploring how AI might be used to support the recommendations of a human advisor in a highly-consequential use case like personal finance.
Imagine chatting with a human financial advisor as part of a robo-advisor service. As detailed, bespoke financial analysis and advice may not be appropriate for a client with a lower level of investments, the human advisor might leverage generative AI to source and compose question responses for the client before reviewing it and passing it along imbedded into that human advisor’s chat-based recommendations.
Since these back-end processes can be opaque to the end-user, clear labeling and disclosure built into the chat interface can help make the advice more transparent. In-context label and filtering affordances provide clarity at the moment of content consumption. Tooltips provide details about data sources, AI models used, and any relationships between recommendations and the model provider that could present conflicts of interest.
Provenance and filtering options for the personal information environment
As synthetic media proliferates, the digital informational noise that’s created has the potential to negatively impact users’ digital wellbeing. The inconspicuous blending of synthetic and human-generated content may become increasingly hard to discern, causing information overload, desensitization, and fatigue.
We explored how synthetic content might show up in a work environment, such as sharing an AI-generated news image on an internal messaging platform. While the imagery may cause initial alarm, such as seeing a natural disaster overtaking over a major city, providing the user with detailed metadata about the image, including a provenance tree and prompt history, reveals the true nature of the content—it’s synthetic.
However, source details may not be sufficient to control the digital informational noise of synthetic media. Users in highly-regulated or sensitive environments, may desire further control over the sources of synthetic content. We explored how filtering could be integrated at the OS-level, providing users with the highest-level of control over the information that appears in their field of view.
Ultimately, the user should be empowered to decide how algorithms shape their reality, yet often those algorithms are opaque and trained on questionable datasets. Ensuring that media sources can be authenticated and independently verified is a critical architecture for building trust between humans and AI-powered systems.
Shaping higher education for inclusivity and equity
The Challenge
Driven by the collective efforts of advisors, teachers, and trusted adults, holistic advising has proved effective for steering students, irrespective of their backgrounds, towards credentials of value. The Coordinating Board for Higher Education (i.e., The Coordinating Board) in one of the largest states in the country aspired to establish a holistic and equitable advising system for all Learners (e.g., students and returning adults). Consequently, they enlisted the help of Artefact to delve into the needs and experiences of Learners and Supporters (e.g., advisors, counselors, parents, teachers, friends, and mentors) to develop a way forward.
The Outcome
Our six-month collaboration resulted in a comprehensive and actionable 5-year strategy and roadmap grounded in Learner and Supporter insights. It includes plans to modernize the Coordinating Board’s suite of digital advising tools, increase the availability of human support, and develop advisor effectiveness through training and capacity building. Since delivering the strategy, the state’s Commissioner approved the roadmap, and the initial phase is currently under implementation.
Understanding a Fragmented Advising System from Multiple Perspectives
Designed to support students pursuing a degree or career, the advising system in this particular state spans over one thousand independent school districts and thirty-five public universities. Each educational institution’s diverse population, bespoke resources, and graduation requirements lead to inconsistent access to quality advising across the state. We used a mixed-methods research approach, utilizing generative and evaluative methodologies to understand the current and ideal advising experiences of a diverse range of Learners and Supporters.
Our research process included conducting 60-minute, one-on-one qualitative interviews, an in-depth technology assessment of twelve of the Coordinating Board’s tools, and 90-minute co-creation sessions with Learners and Supporters.
Learners Navigate College and Career Pathways Differently
We analyzed our findings and identified six broad categorizations of Learners and Supporters in the state. Learners fall into three common categories based on their mindsets, behaviors, challenges, and needs.
Reactors are hesitant about their future and often focused solely on the present. They need support to come to them. Explorers can envision the future and begin building a plan for themselves, but they still seek support as they consider multiple possibilities. Planners have a vision for their future, actively strive to achieve their goals, and proactively seek out support when needed.
“Honestly, I wasn’t really thinking about college until the minute we graduated.”
– Eduardo, Student, Reactor
Learners seek and receive support from all types of Supporters. Guides understand how to navigate college and career transitions, passing along professional knowledge and formal resources. Coaches motivate Learners when they get “stuck,” need reassurance, and require nudges to be held accountable. Peers identify with the interests and lived experiences of Learners and can serve as an exemplar of success and a source of inspiration.
“There’s information everywhere and I don’t have time to crunch all the data!”
– Nina, Teacher, Coach
While each type of Learner navigates college and career in their own way, they each experience their non-linear educational journey in phases. These phases — Dream, Explore, Deliberate, Pursue, and Acclimate represent the actions Learners take to transition from one environment to another.
Developing a Vision for the Future of Advising
Conversations with Learners and Supporters helped us understand that the current advising system is episodic, fractured, inconsistent, and impersonal. To realize a vision for the future of advising the state, a modern advising system would need to continuously work with Learners and Supporters through a coordinated effort that would be consistent and compassionate. This insight formed the basis of the north star vision and theory of change.
Through a series of workshops with the Coordinating Board and its partners, we used a theory of change framework to draft the key strategies and actions required to realize the north star vision that would occur over a 5-year period. The strategies aim to develop a data and technology infrastructure to create a personalized advising experience, leverage a network of partners to scale high-impact interventions across the state and democratize the role of advising to increase the number of effective Supporters.
“I feel fortunate that I have people to encourage me on my journey to go back to school.”
Geoffrey
Returning Adult Student, Planner
We started this program by asking, “How might we create an ideal advising experience?” After speaking with Learners and Supporters from all backgrounds, we found an open landscape where students could explore any future they might dream of, and a curated set of tools and resources to help them along the way. The Coordinating Board is dedicated to creating a holistic and equitable advising system, one with a modern technology infrastructure and human Supporters credentialed to provide effective guidance. With the leadership of the Coordinating Board and the state’s Commissioner, we are hopeful for a future where educational advising works for all, one student and one credential at a time.
Defining opportunities that promote youth well-being in digital spaces
Strategy
Centering youth voices to foster opportunities that promote mental health
The Challenge
The tech landscape is rapidly evolving, with the metaverse and web3 redefining the social spaces in which young people carry out their online lives. Hopelab, a social innovation lab and impact investor, wanted to explore how it may influence, design, and invest in these spaces to support youth in their mental health and well-being, particularly those from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. Hopelab engaged with Artefact to understand the current and future state of web3 and the metaverse to uncover actionable areas of opportunity Hopelab can readily act upon.
The Outcome
We created a comprehensive set of principles and opportunity areas that informed Hopelab’s strategy aimed at influencing and activating emerging technologies in support of youth well-being. Our research with subject matter experts, youth advocates, and creators clarified what young people are experiencing online and resulted in six principles describing what youth want in a better tech future. We also conducted several co-design workshops with Hopelab teams to create alignment on the key opportunities for partnership with organizations at the frontlines of creating equity in digital spaces.
Gen Z activity, by the numbers
Nationwide surveys showcase how Gen Z youth are already engaging with metaverses and web3 assets. Compared to millenials, Gen Z is almost equally enthusiastic about the metaverse and web3.
Seeing the metaverse and web3 as a force for good
A key question Hopelab posed is whether the metaverse and web3 will exacerbate the harms youth already experience on the internet today or whether things might be different. It’s undeniable that the metaverse and web3 will host a series of dark activity, such as bad actors, extreme content, echo chambers, privacy breaches, and surveillance capitalism, all issues that proliferate on today’s internet. In fact, the immersive nature of the metaverse may make some harms more acute and traumatic. Furthermore, the volatility of digital currencies can cause financial distress, leaving those who invested more vulnerable to market crashes, like content creators or small businesses.
And yet, there is reason for hope. The metaverse and web3 offer new and exciting opportunities for youth to gather, play, experiment, exchange ideas, and create. All of which are critical developmental assets for adolescents that promote wellness and the ability to thrive. Well-being is supported through rich social experiences on platforms like Fortnite and Roblox. And on web3, young people are starting careers that weren’t previously viable, finding new audiences and fanbases, creating financial independence, and finding and contributing to caring communities. Communities are engaging in these spaces while building their creativity, socioemotional, and critical thinking skills online.
With this context in mind, we focused our research on how best to mitigate the harms of these technologies and build technology that supports youth mental health and well-being as a force for good. Our research and strategy process combined expert voices alongside youth advocates and BIPOC LGBTQ+ artists to gather a holistic perspective on impact, ethics, responsibilities, and initiatives.
“For the average youth, there’s probably a lot of benefits to [these emerging technologies], and they may not feel so much of the downside. But there are vulnerable populations whose lives are horribly impacted in a very negative way, so it’s pluses and minuses. The average kid’s going to get through this and probably find a number of benefits, but we have vulnerable populations and they’re going to struggle with this.”
Mike Milham
Vice President of Research, Child Mind Institute
A complex landscape
Emerging tech will create positive and negative impacts on four critical components of youth well-being.
Identity & Self Sufficiency
The ability for youth to explore self-expression and gain financial independence are promising aspects of the metaverse and web3, but unfortunately is still not a reality for most. Avatars create a sense of psychological safety for youth to experiment and play with their identities, but manifesting avatars through VR can also lead to more embodied experiences of online harassment of bullying. In the same manner, web3 technology promise financial independence and data ownership for the creator economy, but also compounds pressure to perform and may be a more challenging space to enter for creators with smaller audiences.
Image Credit: Idoru
Meaning & Connection
Youth are forming relationships and communities online that mean as much to them as those formed in real life. Both the metaverse and web3 offer different social interactions and affordances, broadening the possibility for richer engagement and more diverse communities to form. There is hope that these technologies can develop our socioemotional skills and teach empathy. At the same time, negative experiences online are greatly upsetting and isolating and some metaverse spaces, especially those accessed by VR, could exacerbate this as the metaverse draws us further into the digital realm.
Image Credit: Fortnite
Rest & Rejuvenation
There are exciting new applications in the metaverse that can support our need to take breaks and find a moment of calm. But experts are concerned that this tech will further draw us in, thereby diminishing our ability to control how we spend our time. Digital markers that can drive wellness interventions are still in the “infant stage” of development, as are interventions that leverage peer networks. However, the large amount of activity in the space is promising and it will be interesting to see what takes hold.
Image Credit: Tripp VR
Safety & Security
While public awareness and actions to protect safety online are growing, with the advent of web3 and the metaverse there will be new forms of dark patterns and dark participation that can leave youth more vulnerable than ever. For example, the absence of an accountable organization for any given web3 platform makes makes bad actors difficult to penalize. A variety of safety measures will be needed. Platforms that design for bystander interventions and peer communities of support offer a promising way forward to protect youth safety and security.
Image Credit: Adobe Stock
Understanding the journey
Young people’s relationships to digital technologies are dynamic and multifaceted. Speaking with youth advocates and BIPOC creators helped us understand their relationship to the metaverse and web3, and how these technologies may appear or gain interest in their lives. These high-level journey maps summarize general pathways into each technology and the potential tradeoffs youth negotiate.
“Some members of Gen Z don’t exactly attach to the metaverse right away because I think we have yet to be given the value add. It’s another platform you can be with your friends on, and we already have very many versions of ourselves on social media. But the potential it has is huge. If the metaverse is a place in which you can have psychological safety, where there’s social and emotional growth and there are platforms dedicated to that at every level of execution, when you ask me about my excitement, that’s a 10 out of 10.”
Arielle Geismar
Youth Activist & Hopelab Youth Advisor
“At the end of the day, whether it’s Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, any of them really, you are supporting their platform. It’s not your platform. We have to rely on them and hope the don’t crash or end up being sold to someone that’s going to change the algorithm in a way that all these people that follow me right now can no longer engage with me[…]This is a lot of work, especially when all of these platforms keep changing their technology, entry point and qualifiers.”
SassyBlack
Music Creator & Consultant
Principles for Action
Through our research, we found six principles that were important to youth when creating interventions for a youth and wellness-centered web3 and metaverse. Each principle paired with multiple opportunity areas and interventions on which Hopelab and its partners can act.
Youth are already showing us the way
Young people feel the impact of technology in their daily lives for better or worse. And they are willing and ready to express their viewpoints and enact change. There is a collective call towards a different future that supports their efforts towards autonomy, curiosity, and connection.
The current energy around the metaverse and web3 is exciting because, much like generative AI, the technology is still emerging, and there is room to shape conversations, actions, and decisions. These technologies will mature and be harder to influence in the coming years. Though diving into the early stages of development may seem overwhelming and ambiguous, it allows Hopelab and its partners to initiate positive change from the onset. We are excited about the work Hopelab is doing to support the next generation to establish a better, more healthy relationship with today’s technologies and those coming in the near future.
Learn more about Hopelab by visiting the website and following it on LinkedIn.
“This is new tech. I think it’s important for communities like ours to be loud and to reassure women and to encourage them to participate so that they don’t miss out.”
Traverse helps bridge the patient-provider gap to enable more inclusive and respectful care.
The Challenge
The United States healthcare system struggles to holistically serve increasingly diverse patient populations. Existing care excludes many factors that acknowledge a patient’s personal and cultural identities, negatively affecting healthcare access, experiences, and outcomes.
+ Marginalized identities receive less quality care + Diverse language speakers have less access to medical information + Multicultural communities are unable to establish trust in providers
The Outcome
Traverse leverages digital tools and technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to support culturally responsive patient-provider interactions across the primary care journey.
It helps bridge the gap between providers steeped in biomedical systems and patients with increasingly diverse lifeworlds, so providers can address their patients’ whole identities and backgrounds, leading to better health outcomes.
“[My doctors] treat me as if I had no rights. As if I weren’t human. Many times, my doctors have refused to treat my asthma and diabetes. They allege my problems are mental, they dismiss the symptoms I describe to them and mock me because I am trans.”
Personalized care that is powered by a decentralized identity wallet
The Traverse system is built on top of a digital identity wallet that encrypts all sensitive personal, cultural, social, and familial data shared by patients and stores it in a decentralized manner on the blockchain. A patient’s smartphone acts as the key for unlocking their digital identity with providers who can use the data to seamlessly tailor care unique to patient needs, preferences, and values. This self-sovereign approach ensures that patient data is portable across providers, accessed with explicit consent, and controlled directly by the patient.
Traverse uses digital tools to support patient and provider interactions across the primary care journey.
Pre-visit
Connecting patients to best-fit providers
By leveraging the personal and cultural profiles stored in patient digital identity wallets, Traverse sorts and presents patients with local providers who align with different facets of their background, culture, and identity.
In addition, detailed provider profiles highlight and display reviews from anonymized patients with similar data profiles. These features deliver relevant community insights, helping patients select culturally-aligned healthcare providers.
Setting expectations for clinical visits
The digital onboarding experience details what to expect during clinical encounters, helping patients avoid uncomfortable surprises with providers. This stage aims to bring familiarity and alleviate anxiety for patients who may experience discomfort or mistrust in clinical and medical systems.
Contextual tips for providers on the go
Providers are given a digital tip board that summarizes a patient’s concerns, cultural background, alternative medical perspectives, and other factors that impact how providers might provide care and communicate with the patient.
Traverse also suggests relevant patient interview questions and delivers reminders about patient identity details to enable more culturally responsive care that considers an individual’s multi-dimensional lifeworld.
Clinical visit
Supporting more dynamic conversation
During clinical visits, providers use a tablet that acts as an AI-based digital scribe. Using natural language processing (NLP), the Dynamic Visit feature listens to conversations between patients and providers. It then delivers discussion prompts and relevant resources to providers, which can be accessed in real-time or referenced later.
Facilitating bi-directional communication
Traverse acts as an interpretation tool to bridge patient-provider understanding gaps. For example, providers caring for patients who value alternative medical approaches, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), would be coached to integrate them into treatment plans.
In situations where providers need more support communicating health details to patients, personalized flashcards can be presented for better understanding.
After visit
Digital coaching throughout the day
Providers receive immediate feedback, between clinical visits, from AI-enabled conversations with patients. The Dynamic Visit feature uses NLP to analyze discussions and delivers actionable tips to make on-the-go adjustments based on communication factors such as agreeableness, compassion, and positivity.
For the provider
Relevant cultural factors the AI scribe presents in patient conversations are re-surfaced and integrated into provider EHR systems for easy reference. Allowing providers to engage more deeply with the information and help outline culturally responsive after-care instructions.
Providers can also grab real-time learnings by engaging with content in the sidebar. They are encouraged to expand their cultural competence with courses that help fulfill continued medical education (CME) credits.
For the patient
After visits, patients receive a follow-up note from providers summarizing their visit and outlining the next steps in a culturally responsive way. For example, to address affordability concerns, specialist referrals might show expected out-of-pocket cost information and help navigate insurance and public benefits.
Similarly, non-medical interventions such as diet and lifestyle changes can be contextualized within the cultures and communities that shape how patients view and experience health.
What it means to design for agency, understanding, and transparency in healthcare
Agency means that patients have a right to exercise control in their healthcare decision-making. They have the ability to locate culturally appropriate care and therapeutic options through interactions that reaffirm their dignity.
Understanding requires bidirectional communication where vital medical,
cultural, and contextual information is shared in patient-provider
conversations, giving providers a strong sense of culturally appropriate
treatment options and patients the ability to choose between them.
Transparency involves providing visibility at every step of the medical journey to support patient decision-making. It means giving them clear guidance on what to expect during medical appointments so they can best prepare how they see fit.
Generating insights to support and empower youth activism
The Challenge
Discover and understand technology related issues that animate youth activism and the barriers young people face to support social change venture, Omidyar Network’s, vision of a technological ecosystem that empowers youth and makes technology outcomes more accountable, equitable, and inclusive.
The Outcome
Generative research and strategy recommendations informed directly by youth voices. Our research revealed seven recurring issues that youth are focused on today, helping to align areas of focus and opportunity to Omidyar Network’s core strategies. Recommendations for a wider group of philanthropies and funders were also created.
“Artefact’s roots in human-centered design made them the ideal partner to help Omidyar Network create a strategy inclusive of youth voices. Their commitment to centering youth voices throughout the process generated actionable insights and recommendations. Omidyar Network is excited to use these findings to shape future engagements with digital natives. ”
Emma Leiken
Chief of Staff, Programs Omidyar Network
Informing strategy with inclusive & continuous research
Omidyar Network needed actionable insights to ensure their learning strategy serves, supports, and empowers youth. To achieve this, we pursued a mixed methods research approach that included social listening, in-depth 1:1 interviews, and focus groups discussions with young people who have spoken about how technology is affecting their generation.
Whether it was engaging digital natives to comment on our preliminary research insights, or inviting them to attend a key milestone presentation to Omidyar Network, we sought to ensure digital native voices remained centered throughout.
Identifying and centering seven focal issues that activate youth
Our research revealed a common theme – today’s youth is a generation attuned to the systemic and interrelated nature of many of the issues they are passionate about.
While the topics young activists care about are diverse, we identified seven recurring focal issues that animate youth today. These seven areas can help Omidyar Network and other social change ventures gain a deeper understanding of digital native activists and their generation-specific journey, experiences, challenges, and needs.
Understanding the three core needs of young activists
Now that the seven focal issues at the heart of digital natives have been identified. A second question arose: what do youth activists need for sustained, organized, and successful activism? Again using a mixed-methods approach, Artefact continued conversations with youth participants to discover their needs, and apply those discoveries to Omidyar Network’s funding and philanthropic strategy.
Our conversation with digital native activists and leaders revealed many areas of need that youth organizers have regardless of the focal issue of their activism. The diverse needs could however be bucketed into three categories: personal, organizational, and external needs.
Personal
Needs related to current and aspiring activists as people
Maintain balance
How might we make activism more balanced, sustainable, and life-affirming for individuals? What if digital natives had access to youth activist support circles, workshops, and wellness retreats?
Enable focus & flexibility
How might we create freedom for young activists to evolve and grow beyond one issue or model of change? What if there was a youth activist cohort designed for or co-created with digital natives?
Organizational
Needs related to running a youth-led organization
Build infrastructure
How might we reduce the administrative burdens and risks associated with organizing? What if resources and consulting on the organizational landscape were committed to digital natives?
Sustain momentum
How might we help youth-led organizations maintain momentum over time? What if digital natives received stipends or compensation for their work?
Create healthy partnerships
How might we support mutually beneficial partnerships that are respectful? What if mixers, chats, or formal mentorship offerings existed for digital natives?
External
Needs related to interacting with others
Create space for impact
How might we help digital natives find places where their voices are valued? What if digital natives received invitations to participate (through grants, fellowships, and competitions)?
Reimagine standards
How might we reimagine the evaluation standards for digital natives? What if there were programs that met activists where they are?
“Young people starting their own thing need to believe in a cause, and commit to investing in it […] The fast paced nature of online social justice discourse has made it the norm to care about caring about things.
That’s not enough. We need mission, community, and a deep, collective sense of care.”
Sukhnidh Kaur
Digital Native Activist & Content Creator
Recommendations for investing in better futures for our youth
With insights, opportunities, and organizational goals aligned, Artefact helped Omidyar Network ask actionable and generative questions. If teams were to consider allocating resources to address personal needs in youth activists, for example, they can ask “how might we create freedom for young activists to evolve and grow beyond one issue or model of change?”
Asking questions such as these, will help focus Omidyar Networks’s offerings and serve as a gut-check to ensure efforts continue to center youth needs.
Detecting age-related macular degeneration earlier and more accurately
The Challenge:
Transform MacuLogix’s groundbreaking automated dark adaptometer from a tabletop research device into a patient-centered, wearable system to enable eye care professionals to more effectively detect and monitor age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
The Outcome:
A responsive, adaptable, and smart AMD testing experience designed for the needs of patients, technicians, and clinicians.
The Impact:
As the first wearable and portable dark adaptometer on the market, eye care professionals across the world are using the AdaptDx Pro system to detect and manage AMD.
Due to its ease of use, built-in AI technician, and ability to create a personal darkroom, eye care professionals are screening up to six times more patients per month with the AdaptDx Pro than with the tabletop version.
“Artefact was a fantastic team and partner. They are thoughtful about technology and care deeply about the user. Thanks to Artefact’s great product design and guidance on user experience, the AdaptDx Pro has been a smash hit.”
Gregory R. Jackson, PhD
Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, MacuLogix
A more accessible and comfortable screening experience
AMD is the leading cause of adult blindness in developed countries, affecting one in eight adults over 60 years old.
MacuLogix has led the medical field in AMD screening since launching its novel dark adaptation testing device in 2014. Yet this large tabletop device was difficult to use for many patients and required a specialized dark room at significant up-front cost to eye care professionals.
We partnered with MacuLogix to help transform this tabletop tool into a comfortable screening experience for people of all abilities, helping eye care professionals improve patient outcomes through earlier and more accurate diagnosis of AMD.
“The AdaptDx Pro is so much easier [than the tabletop device] because you don’t have to put your chin on the device. This is far more comfortable. I can actually lean back. I can relax.”
AMD patient
Supporting patients of all abilities
Artefact helped MacuLogix transform its tabletop medical device into the most accessible, head-mounted testing tool of its kind.
The comfortable, lightweight, and flexible experience serves patients of all physical abilities, including those with wheelchairs or who are bedridden.
Improving patient outcomes through early detection
Early detection and proactive disease management are key to preventing vision loss from AMD, but historically AMD testing has been based on late-stage symptoms alone.
The flexibility and ease of the AdaptDx Pro allows eye care professionals to increasingly test based on age (the leading risk factor), transforming AMD testing from a reactive to preventative approach.
Increasing accuracy and efficiency of screening
Better usability and less workflow friction help technicians screen patients faster and more easily.
Consistent, automated testing instructions and adaptive feedback powered by the AdaptDx Pro’s AI assistant “Theia” reduce risk of patient or technician error and increase the exam’s reliability.
Exam automation also empowers technicians to multi-task and screen multiple patients simultaneously, further increasing the rate of successful screening.
Designing for all stakeholders
Artefact led generative primary research with patients, eye care professionals, and technicians to gain empathy and identify opportunities for the new AdaptDx Pro system. We then conducted evaluative prototype testing to determine the best experience concept for all stakeholders.
Our research uncovered key insights to inform the design and experience of the AdaptDx Pro – from the importance of retaining social connection for patients throughout the automated test, to ensuring that technicians are aware of what the patient is experiencing during the exam by including an external-facing embedded display on the headset.
“The AdaptDx Pro is so vital to the care we provide that another unit had to be purchased to accommodate our increased volume.”
Shajida Reich
Optometrist
Preventing vision loss from AMD
MacuLogix envisions a future where everyone 50 years of age and older can access accurate and efficient AMD screening. The AdaptDx Pro will enable clinics to scale their practices by testing more patients across different contexts and increasing the number of patients who receive early AMD detection and treatment.
We’re proud to be a part of MacuLogix’s vision to eliminate blindness caused by AMD.
