Youth Network is a mobile application that encourages youth leadership and creates a simpler experience for Canadian Youth to attend and organize equity centered events.
How might we mobilize youth leaders to promote equity in their communities? The 2021 Adobe Creative Jam hackathon partnered with Creative Reaction Labs to ask designers to develop an app that helps Canadian Youth Leaders engage with their communities, and by extension, become Re-designers for Justice to bring equity into their communities and existing systems.
I feel there aren't enough creative workshops in the community that could provide opportunities to those who need it
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I wish to find activism and volunteer opportunities within the community in order to gain experience and create a positive change
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A digital platform is much required ever since the pandemic and since everyone is comfortable with it
Youth Network is a social networking and event planning app for mobile, that allows Canadian Youth aged 13 to 26 to connect with other youth leaders in their community, attend workshops and events, and reach out to existing resources such as sponsors and businesses with a shared goal of promoting equity.
Research for this problem began with secondary research on the stakeholders involved in Canadian Youth programs, themes of influence and the types of events that influence communities and their potential outcomes. The team spent nearly half of the deadline learning about diversity in design, equity design and examples of Youth Leadership programs and their effects on communities and systems.
Stakeholders :
Canada’s Young People
The Private Sector
The Non profit sector
Government
Social, Economic and Environmental Change Local and Global food security, Climate change, Access to finance, Gender gap in income and health.
Innovation and LeadershipTransformation of social systems through some combination of behaviour change, culture shifts, public policy changes, and cross-sectoral collective impactHow to implement specific feedback.
Getting indigenous perspective.Getting a diverse / black / Latin / international perspective to share thoughts and feelings when developing strategies and inviting indigenous leaders to speak at the event in question.
Theme :
Access to Capital and Professional Services Accessible, experimental education and learning Culture of Risk-taking, resilience Geographic Location Inclusion / diversity Knowledge and Resource Sharing Strategic networks and connections
Many youth leadership events are promoted through word of mouth or even have a gated entrance by needing to be invited. Youth Network lets Canadian youth find these opportunities on their own.
There is a lack of options for Canadian Youth to connect with each other, discuss, create and advertise their own events.
Many organizations or young leaders have the drive to start events, workshops and businesses, but lack a source of communication between themselves and existing sponsors.
Based on our primary and secondary research we began with the brainstorming through exploring different ideas. We initially thought of creating an app that would allow the users to record a video of themselves and upload it to the app so that it can provide access to many other people of the community, however, that was eliminating the stage to connect to different people and talk to them. Hence, we decided upon creating an app for the community that would not only allow them to connect but give them the freedom of speech through organizing events, get togethers etc.
Based on the feedback, we tweaked the idea a bit where the users could choose to save the events and add the events to the calendar which would remind the users when the event date arrives. Besides, we also iterated the design based on our target audience, since the teens are tech savvy and habituated with large visuals (photos, videos, graphics, logos, etc) we added images for each event or of an organization to create a visually appealing app design.
Splash screen for new and returning users. Includes actions for sign up and login, and some introductory text to accompany the app logo.
The sign up page, available after the splash page. Simple design, with the option of signing up with an existing social media account, or email and password.
The users also get an option to browse through different locations.
Beyond events and community posts, the app also features a Resources section. Resources encompasses business, organizations and sponsors that are involved in equity design and youth leadership.
Users can also use this section to request resources such as sponsors for their events.
Community posts allow users to post about their life experiences, events, and share information in general. From an event post, users can contact the poster to talk further, if they do desire.
Chat function. After finding someone through the community section, users can then contact each other through the in-app text function.
Creating an event post is very simple, and contains 4 steps on Youth Network. Anyone can create an event, and events can be located physically or on-line.
The saves section displays all saved events, resources, and community posts. Users can save posts by clicking the heart in the bottom right corner of post cards.
Account page for a returning user. The account features links to a contacts list, messaging, and a calendar as well as created events, and all attended past events, created resources and community posts. Users can also select "interest tags" that will help personalize their event recommendations.
Youth Network contains an in-app calendar to track upcoming events that a user is attending or has created. Dates with events scheduled will be highlighted in purple, and selecting the date will bring up the date and time details, with a link to the full event description.
For this project, I learned about time management, inclusive design, user and UX research, and rapid prototyping. I believe that the strengths evident in this project came from the amount of research I completed beforehand, and the design planning of the product in the form of a user flow.