1. Setting up the lab

Youth Literacy labs offer collaborative spaces for young people to explore issues, challenges, and opportunities for advancing their access to quality health information and services. It's easy to set up a YHL lab. First, we plan a workshop to conduct thematic co-creation sessions with young people as experts. The first steps of exploration include tools for self-assessment and peer activities.

2. Self-assessment and peer activities

At this stage, we learn from each other to figure out the main issue that the campaign is trying to tackle. This step is important since it entails identifying whom the project or campaign is targeting and what kind of information is needed. Various tools can be used to explore and discover what health and wellbeing mean to you and the group.

Examples:

Self-assessment tools


Wellbeing priorities

Burnout and wellbeing scale (Recipes for Wellbeing)

Backcasting to move forward (Recipes for Wellbeing)

Group assessment activities

Action learning set

Collaborative painting

Rose, bud, thorn

Crossing the line

3. Making data into ideas

In the Ideation phase, we will share our findings with our group or team and figure out what we can do with all the data and research. One of the toughest parts is trying to put it all together. We get a lot of different stories and ideas and it can be hard to keep track of it all. But there are ways to help make sense of it, like making frameworks that can help us see patterns and make sense of what we've heard.

4. Committing to the process

​

When we have identified key objectives, activities, messages, themes, content types and channels, we come to an agreement on the goals and objectives of the health information campaign. At this stage, it is important that participants commit to the process. The process can be different for everyone, but it's usually a few workshops with us and the youth workers or stakeholders. Different young people can help out at different points, which can be valuable for co-designing projects and campaigns that run over several months or even a few years.

Collecting and synthesising data Download your learnings (IDEO.org) Synthesis tool: Top Five (IDEO.org) Create insight statements (IDEO.org) ​ Showing your findings Create vignettes, storyboards, or personas

5. Inviting stakeholders to collaborate

We’ve been using tools to make sure our perspectives, recommendations, and research are heard, giving us the chance to get involved with lots of different stakeholders and make sure the experiences, needs, and ideas of young people are taken seriously. Now it is time to invite stakeholders to collaborate with us in the co-design process, and we ask organisations, practitioners, decision-makers, and experts from different sectors to make a commitment to learning from young people and co-design solutions with youth experts.

6. Stakeholder workshop(s)

We conduct one or two stakeholder workshops in the YHL lab. Here we work directly with youth health workers, educators, and other stakeholders to create our health information campaign, project, or service improvement based on the experiences, needs, and ideas of young people. Through facilitated co-design workshops, we come together to make decisions about the design of the project or product that we are creating. Everyone has valued expertise to bring to the design process. Shared expertise and power help everyone bring their own views and work together to create ideas and solutions. This way, everyone is an active part of the creative process, relying on the exchange of knowledge between stakeholders to reach better solutions that support and improve youth health and wellbeing.

Co-design tools Identify barriers and initiates Create journey maps Facilitating co-design processes How to make toast

8. Prototype

We have got lots of great ideas that we are ready to test out using prototypes. We got these ideas from co-design sessions and by talking to health practitioners, NGOs, policymakers, academics, and experts. Now we ask them to be partners who will help implement and test out the ideas we have come up with together.

9. Test or implement

We work directly with youth health workers, educators, and other stakeholders to create our health information campaign, project, or service improvement. Through facilitated workshops, we come together to make decisions about the design of the project or product that we are creating. Shared expertise and power help everyone involved bring their own views and work together to create something awesome. This way, everyone is an active part of the creative process, while still relying on the shared knowledge between all stakeholders who design real-life solutions to improve youth health and wellbeing.

Examples Infographic (Adolescent Health Initiative): Identifying risks and improving outcomes for adolescent patients Poster (Adolescent Health Initiative): We want to earn your trust

10. Quality improvement cycles

To evaluate the effect of our project or campaign and keep improving our ideas and the solutions we are putting into the world, we ask for feedback from the young people we have been learning from. As we start asking questions and get feedback on how our product or project can improve, the quality improvement cycle can begin. It's important to use this feedback to make sure we're doing the best we can. Often, quality improvement cycles are led by stakeholders in the organisations that implement and test solutions.

11. Youth-led evaluation

Project or service evaluations, auditing, monitoring and needs assessment can be used to enable youth participation. It's about understanding what young people think about youth projects and services, and how to improve them. It helps us figure out what's working and what could be better. All these processes involve collecting data and then making decisions about what it can tell us. Young people can take a leading role in the design and implementation of these tools and make sure youth voices are heard.

Evaluating health services Evaluating youth-friendliness of health centres Evaluating work with young researchers