Design implications for supporting youth co-design of interactive technologies through functional prototyping

Youth co-design has the potential to surface creative and personally meaningful ideas for future technologies, yet participation often stops at the ideation phase. Without accessible tools for functional prototyping, youth may struggle to develop their ideas further, limiting both their engagement in co-design and their ability to communicate their visions. This paper presents iReal, a tangible prototyping toolkit co-designed with youths and educators to support hands-on exploration of interactive technologies. iReal combines Tangible Coding Blocks and Accordion Design Templates to scaffold interaction design and physical form-making, respectively. Implemented in co-design workshops with 40 middle school students (ages 11–14), the toolkit enabled participants to create personalised, working prototypes. Our findings offer two main contributions: (1) design implications for toolkit development that support youth co-designers in functional prototyping and (2) insights into how hands-on making with iReal surfaces youth’s situated values and lived experiences. By making the design process tangible, shareable, and negotiable, the iReal demonstrates how functional prototyping can deepen engagement and reflection in youth co-design.