Co-design Activities with Students

As part of our commitment to fostering awareness and innovation in digital wellbeing, the **UNIBO team has organized a *20-hour PCTO (Percorsi per le Competenze Trasversali e l’Orientamento)* program to engage teenagers in the project directly. This initiative involves collaboration with two local scientific high schools:

• I.S.I.S. “Leonardo da Vinci” (Cesenatico)
• Istituto Superiore “Marie Curie” (Savignano sul Rubicone)

A total of 70 students from four third- and fourth-year classes participated in the PCTO aimed at conceptualizing and prototyping an application designed to enhance digital wellbeing among their peers.

The app focuses on raising awareness of digital wellbeing and its lesser-known aspects, such as deceptive patterns, Digital Self-Control Tools (DSCT), and strategies for a more balanced and mindful digital experience. Through this process, students engaged with real-world design challenges, applying participatory design methodologies while developing essential problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

During the PCTO, the students were first involved in a co-design session where they sketched some low-fidelity mockups on paper, or high-fidelity mockups using digital tools, and then were prompted to create the prototype of the mobile application through a visual language (MIT App Inventor). The whole project was done in small groups (3 or 4 people per group), and the analysis of the results provided useful insights for the DIGI-Teens project.

The results of the co-design represent a fundamental step in the design of our system, incorporating the ideas and proposals of the students themselves.