Our second Teen Design Day workshops started on June 21, 2013 and ran three consecutive days (6/21, 6/22, and 6/23). We extended the workshops to three days because we learned in the previous Teen Design Days that two days was not enough to do everything we had planned.

Our generous host this time was Foster Library – King County Public Library System. They provided us with a well-lit conference room that was filled to capacity. The youth that participated (~25) in the workshop provided lots of energy and insights.

Highlights from this workshop include,

• A half a day training session on Scratch—a programming language designed to help young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively—led by a Microsoft employee
• The participation of a designer who talked with the students about the field of design. She also provided the youth with suggestions and critiqued the products and services they developed in their teams

The move to a three-day workshop worked out very well. It gave us enough time to do more in depth foundational work around the idea of information mediaries and also allowed us to give teams more time to develop their designs.

One thing we were unable to get done because of time limitations is our Community Celebration. We look forward to our next Teen Design Days where we hope to be able to do the Community Celebration.