I Make It

Many young people aged 12–16 grow up with long-term stress at home, while remaining largely invisible to support services. Existing interventions often fail to connect with their lived experience and are quickly perceived as too verbal, heavy or problem-focused. The central design question in this project was: how can we design a form of preventive support that truly reaches young people and gives them a sense of ownership?

Being A Designer initiated I Make It and shaped the entire design process. In collaboration with Indigo Preventie, Hogeschool Leiden and youth work organisation gro-up buurtwerk, we set up an innovative design lab. Through short, cyclical lab sessions, we worked closely with young people and experts. By continuously prototyping, testing and iterating — always in direct interaction with the target group — we designed not only the process, but collaboratively developed the intervention itself.

The goal of this project was to explore and design, within a short timeframe, what works for young people who are often difficult to reach, and to translate these insights into a concrete and shared design concept. Rather than starting from a predefined solution, we used design-led experimentation, feedback and redesign together with the target group.

The design lab resulted in a clear proof of concept for a preventive, make-oriented form of support. The chosen design direction is a creative intervention in which young people work together towards a tangible end result, using film as a medium because it enables ownership, collaboration and expression without problematising.

I Make It demonstrates how design-led practice and prototyping with the target group can lead to new forms of preventive support. The project forms the foundation for further development and real-world testing in 2026.