Today I have been drafting potential outcomes and data sources for the ensuring we understand the impact of involving young people on; the lives of the young people involved in the project the lives of the staff involved in the project the outcomes of the project the effectiveness of the decision-making throughout the project the effectiveness of the digital solution(s) we create There is a great summary of suggested outcomes on page 22 of the ‘Make it Count’ report.… Read more “Evaluating user involvement”

So far on this project, we have been talking about ‘young people’. But this is a broad definition. For a start, there are millions of young people! ‘young people’ does not specify an age group. A child is anyone under the age of 18. The United Nations considers anyone between the ages of 15 – 24 a ‘youth’. But charities working with young people in the UK help young people in much more varied age ranges. Then we have been asking ourselves – do we mean all young people? Or are we seeking to work with those who have specific… Read more “Defining and choosing a user group – who do we mean by ‘young people’?”

Since launch, we have been squirrelled away writing a research proposal for the project. We have been trying to involve partners but it is hard to engage people when they don’t know what they are engaging with. We are now putting together a research proposal to help answer some of the questions we have been struggling to grapple with. Today, I have been using some great NPC reports to explore our approach to user involvement (Watch this space!) Here are the reports I have been using: Make it count: Why impact matters in user involvement  Implementing and evaluating co-design: A… Read more “How are we doing user involvement?”

Right now, we’re writing a research brief which will help us shape our first consultation phase with young people. A colleague pointed out – why not ask young people to help you shape it? A great idea. We’ll be working on that…and will update!… Read more “Can young people help us design our research with young people brief?”

Collaboration was always going to be key for the second phase of My Best Life. My experience of collaboration has often been through a formal partnership between certain organisations. When we set out, I had this in mind – and it is still a possibility. But when we started to go down that route, we realised it was too early to form a partnership. We didn’t have a clear enough objective. At the same time, we wanted to define our objective collectively. It seemed like a catch 22! But then we thought – you don’t need a formal partnership to… Read more “You don’t need a formal partnership to collaborate”

Today we were discussing GO/No-go criteria for this subdomain. A few things that came up were: Analytics – do we really need Google Analytics? We decided not to. We care about GDPR and want to only collect essential information about our users. We don’t want your data to be tracked or your personal information to be stored, so we have decide to opt for more ethical analytics, Fathom Analytics (other options are available, such as Simple Analytics by WordPress, but Fathom was the most suitable for our needs.) What do we actually care about when collecting data from users? We… Read more “Go/No-Go criteria for launch”

People in the digital and youth space are wondering in what context, for what services, and with what characteristics could services for young people be digital? On the flip side, where will only a face to face intervention do? As a sector, do we have a good idea of this? What is your experience? Please share!… Read more “When can services be digital? When do they have to be ‘in real life’?”