Title: Beyond Ideation: Functional Prototyping for Youth Co-Design of Future Technologies
Jin Yu
Ph.D. Candidate in Human-Centered Computing (HCC)
School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: Thursday, June 18th, 2026
Time: 10–12 pm EST
Location: CODA Room 232 and Link
Committee
Dr. HyunJoo Oh (Advisor) – School of Industrial Design and School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Betsy DiSalvo – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Thad Starner – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Judith Uchidiuno – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo – Department of Visualization, Texas A&M University
Dr. Alissa Antle – School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University
Abstract
Youth bring perspectives shaped by their everyday lives, identities, and cultural contexts. Yet youth co-design of interactive technologies often stops at the early stages of the design process. Without accessible tools to go further, young participants rarely prototype or evaluate their ideas, leaving their abstract needs and values underdeveloped and rarely articulated through concrete design decisions. This dissertation argues that ideas evolve throughout the design process, and that youth co-design carries those ideas forward when its tools and methods sustain youth agency through ideation, prototyping, and evaluation.
I study this argument through three research questions, each with a tool built for it. My:Talkies, a craft kit, introduces communication-technology concepts through expressive, narrative-driven making (RQ1). Tangible-MakeCode and iReal give youth two hands-on materials: physical coding blocks that connect to the MakeCode/micro:bit ecosystem, and foldable templates for shaping a device's form. Together, they let youth turn abstract ideas into functional prototypes within the short timeframe of a workshop. (RQ2). CoVal positions youth as evaluators of their own and their peers' prototypes, using a structured See-Think-Wonder routine, peer dialogue, and contextual grounding to surface their situated values through critique (RQ3).
Across studies with more than 150 middle-school youth and 30 educators, this dissertation makes three contributions. (1) Three accessible toolkits that help youth carry their own ideas into functional prototyping and evaluation. (2) A record of what these youth want future technologies to do, who those technologies are for, and the situated values that surface through them. (3) A reframing of youth co-design as a constructionist learning environment, where what helps youth's ideas evolve is also what constructionism finds productive for learning.