Funds of Identity in Co-Design

Participatory Design approaches involving youth are often guided by a desire to position participating young people as equal collaborators and experts at communicating their lived experiences. However, these conceptualizations often foreground the design process, with less attention paid to the holistic set of resources (values, experiences, perspectives, beliefs) that inform young people's identities and influence how they engage in the process of co-design. In this paper, we share how we leveraged a set of identity, team building, and design techniques in combination with a youth development approach to unpack youth identities and support relationship-building within the context of an intergenerational co-design team of eleven teenagers, two young adult mentors, and five adults. Our preliminary findings suggest that providing young co-designers with opportunities to reflect upon and share their individual multifaceted identities can support the formation of a cohesive collective identity, effective collaboration, and design ideas that are relevant to youth and their communities.