Using design thinking to empower ethnic minority immigrant youth in their roles as technology and information mediaries
Philip Fawcett, Karen Fisher, Ann Peterson Bishop, Lassana Magassa · 2013
In the USA, almost one in nine people are foreign born. Further, children of immigrants and refugees accounted for the largest segment growth rate, between 1990 and 2008, in the USA for children who are younger than eight years of age. While diversity brings incredible richness, it also brings responsibility for helping immigrants participate fully in American life and culture versus isolating themselves within ethnic communities. We propose an experimental multi-disciplinary framework that uses design thinking combined with perspectives from computer science, information science, and information behavior. Our approach seeks to deeply understand how ethnic minority youth serve as information and technology mediaries within their social networks, and blends these perspectives into a community-based, multi-day workshop format called "teen design days."