Hey Henry! The first co-design session of 2024 is coming up, can you tell us a little about what young people attending can expect?
Hello – yes I’d love to! The sessions are a way for young people to come together share ideas, solve problems and co-design future resources. We’ll meet on Microsoft teams and each session is hosted by myself or Vinishree our service designer, but you can expect to see a few other Mind Of My Own team members from time to time.
These are slightly different to our previous ‘co-production’ sessions as we will be able to mould the workshop to what the young people want it to be. Each will last around 50 minutes and we will be using an interactive whiteboard called Miro where we can get creative! Young people will also receive a £10 voucher as a thank you and a certificate for coming along 🙂
Sounds great! So, what’s the purpose of these sessions?
The purpose of these sessions is to continue to put young people’s voices front- and-centre. They enable young people to have a say in how our apps function and involve them in the creation of other resources related to Mind Of My Own to give them a sense of ownership of their apps. We want to have more sessions this year and develop a group of young people who can help us on the journey of making sure Mind Of My Own apps meet their needs.
So if a young person wants to come along, how can they attend? Will they need any special equipment or tools?
If a young person wants to come along, their worker can drop me (Henry) an email saying their young person wants to attend and then we send them the invite link. They don’t need any special equipment or tools! A laptop will do, a tablet, or something they can use to log into a Teams meeting. They can also bring their worker along to the meeting for support.
Ok, and who can join. Is there an age range and do they have to have used Mind Of My Own Apps previously?
We don’t have a strict age range for the sessions 🙂 but the young person should be of an age where they could be using our apps and be able to be involved in an interactive session. It’s not a necessity for the young person to have used the Mind Of My Own apps, but It would help them to get a better understanding of what the sessions are for.
Fantastic! At the end of the session what do you hope young people will take away from it?
I hope young people take away an increased knowledge of how Mind Of My Own works and an insight into behind the scenes, we are real life people who care and we aren’t scary!
I would also love for them to go away and continue to use Mind Of My Own and get excited when they want to use it! I want them to know that their views are listened too and that we want to work the app around young people’s voices because at the end of the day, these young people are the future of app and without them, there would be no Mind Of My Own.
Finally, what have been your 3 favourite things to have come out of a Mind Of My Own co-design session?
There have been many things that has put a smile on my face from Co-Design workshops! So, in no particular order…
I always like seeing is the surprise on young peoples faces when I say, “the changes you help make will be seen across the world in New Zealand and Australia!” Their faces light up and they think its something amazing, which it is!
Another thing that blows me away is the answers and ideas they give us. We look at Mind Of My Own everyday and can miss things that young people notice, which shows the levels of creativity in them! Some amazing ideas have come out of Co-Design and I’m sure this will continue!
The main thing I enjoy is seeing the difference our apps make. There have been many young people who have come along to our co-production sessions who have used Mind Of My Own and it made a difference to their life, which is the reason why we do our jobs.
