Lab 2: The end of the beginning

After an intense day, the teams are now ready to present their ideas to the rest of the Innovation Lab participants. Working in groups of around 4 to 6, each team has worked on one idea over the day.

They’ve brainstormed, created storyboards and used empathy mapping to fully flesh out their ideas before moving to the prototype stage. They’ve also created posters, illustrations and charts explaining the best points about each developed idea, and explaining why some features have been discarded or refined. Some teams have even written their thoughts on the back of a cereal box!

All seven ideas have changed significantly since we began this morning. We can’t tell you anymore now, but they will hopefully be coming to a screen near you sometime soon.

The next step for us to to take the ideas and the prototypes to our funders, who are Comic Relief, Nominet Trust, Invictus Trust and Right Here. If the funders like the idea, they may decide to provide significant amounts of money so that the idea can be turned into reality.

The ideas that aren’t carried forward will eventually be released into the public domain so that if any young people want to carry on working on their project, they will be free to do so.

There are no guarantees they will like our ideas – they may fund all of them, they may fund none of them – but we think they’re brilliant so we have high hopes! In fact, some of the funders were here today and we already know how impressed they are.

Speaking at today’s closing session, Billy Dann, a funder from Comic Relief said, “We want to fund things that are interesting, that are innovative, that are exciting and that’s what you’ve given me. Some of the stuff that came out of today and the incubation phase will almost certainly be funded. I can’t say which ones, but we’ll try to move things as quickly as we can. In 6 months time, you might see something.”

Dan Sutch, a funder from the Nominet Trust agreed, “Some of these ideas will almost definitely happen. We just have to work out how and in what way that will happen. Thank you for your sheer brilliance”

Susan Blishen, the Project Manager from Right Here said, “We’ll be working very hard over the next few months to take things forward. You’ve done all the hard work and now the ball is in our court.”

It’s been a fantastic day and some amazing ideas have been developed. The young people involved will all be invited back in 6 months time to find out what progress has been made. We hope you’ve enjoyed our search to find out how young people want to use technology to help with their mental health and wellbeing. Thank you for participating, whether that’s by attending the labs, incubating with us, joining the conversation on Twitter or simply by reading this blog.

For more reports and pictures from Lab 1 click here

Written by Mei Leng Yew.