Gen Z Interop Workshop

Co-designing the next chapter of the Web with Gen Z

The platform web has shaped Gen Z's upbringing; these “digital natives” possess a wealth of stories and lived experience to inform digital social innovation.

Solid is an open web specification offering a genuine architectural alternative: interoperable Personal Data Stores affording meaningful data stewardship for citizens and enabling powerful new experiences.

Technical feasibility is only one piece of the puzzle.

But, paradigm shifts require more than technical breakthroughs. Widespread adoption depends on understanding how people construct mental models of data ownership, what UX patterns make new concepts legible, and how communities can be meaningfully involved in shaping technologies that affect them.

These are fundamentally HCI questions — and they remain largely unaddressed for Solid.

Research Questions

These questions sit at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, speculative design, and civic technology.

• How does Gen Z perceive the value of interoperability within communities?
• How do Civic Probes shape and mediate collective ideation around emerging social benefit technologies?
• Can vibe coding democratise development sufficiently to empower participants as genuine co-creators of social impact technology?

Motivations

• Understand and challenge existing assumptions about data, ownership, and the web. Introduce and stress-test perceptions of “ethical web” principles amongst Gen Z participants.
• Investigate how participatory design can support sensitisation through practice, enabling citizens to better understand emerging ethical web technologies.
• Encourage empowerment of Gen Z as co-creators with invaluable lived experience to construct design responses to platform-driven harms and injustices (Haidt, 2024)

Methodology

The project applies participatory HCI methods to engage Gen Z citizens as co-designers of the technologies that will shape their digital futures.

Civic Probes

• Tabletop participatory artefacts that sensitise participants to Solid concepts and provoke collective ideation around data ownership and social benefit — centred on community rather than individual use.

Collaborative Design

• Structured 2-hour workshops in which participants are introduced to Solid, then invited to collectively construct scenarios with interoperability opportunities to benefit communities.

Speculative Prototyping & Vibe Coding

• Formulating workshop outputs into rapid UX mockups and, where appropriate, functional prototypes using AI-enabled development tools; assessing vibe coding as a democratising force for civic technology participation.

Qualitative Analysis

• Reflexive thematic analysis of workshop transcripts and individual interviews to surface mental models, UX expectations, and adoption barriers.

Objectives

This project contributes to both HCI and the Solid community by applying participatory and speculative design methods to surface Gen Z mental models of data interoperability; filling an empirical gap to better understand collective adoption of ethical web technologies.

Research Investigate mental models, UX patterns and expectations, and perceived barriers for interoperability

Methods Develop and evaluate a participatory design approach combining Civic Probes and AI-assisted prototyping as tools for democratising development and engagement

Community Engage Gen Z as active co-designers of the Web to elicit inclusive design directions that support ethical, user-centred adoption of social impact technology.

Let's Talk!

Your feedback is warmly welcomed and encouraged.

• What adoption barriers have you observed, e.g. in your community, that participatory HCI methods might help address?
• Have you used Civic Probes or participatory design methods with non-technical audiences?
• Are you working on ethical tech adoption, data literacy, or youth engagement?
• Would you like to discuss community research partnerships, or other future opportunities related to this work?

Links

• Email
• LinkedIn