"Future Us" youth engagement · strategic foresight · experience design

THE QUESTION

How can we listen to young people about the future — in their language, not ours?

Future Us was a WHO proof of concept for a different kind of youth engagement.

Rather than asking young people to engage with health futures through conventional institutional channels, we went to a digital environment already popular with younger audiences. On Zepeto, we turned WHO’s strategic foresight work into a world people could explore, play with and respond to.

The principle was simple: do not lecture. Create something people want to enter.

The project was designed around young people aged 15–24 and tested whether an international public health organization could use an immersive digital environment not only to communicate, but also to listen.

MY ROLE

My role moved beyond communicating an initiative. I worked with WHO experts to design communications into the initiative itself.

Working across strategic foresight, communications and experience design, I helped translate specialist thinking about possible health futures into an experience built around its audience.

I shaped the communications concept, narrative and user journey; translated complex futures concepts into accessible interactions; developed engagement, gamification and personalization mechanisms; and worked with technical experts and external developers to turn the concept into a functioning digital environment.

It was a different starting point for communications: rather than asking how to communicate something already designed, we asked what kind of experience would make people want to participate in the first place?

WHAT WE BUILT

Future Us combined digital art, an explorable virtual environment, interactive portals, quizzes, open-ended questions, personalized outcomes and playful activities.

Users encountered different forces shaping the future of health, made choices about possible responses and contributed their own perspectives. Their choices also produced personalized identities, making the research component part of the experience rather than a conventional institutional survey.

Not every interaction carried a WHO message. Some were simply there to make exploration enjoyable. That balance mattered: the experience had to earn attention before it could ask for it.

The underlying design deliberately combined interactivity, personalization, relevance and community engagement, while using user choices and open-ended responses to generate insights.

WHAT IT SHOWED

Across its implementation, Future Us generated 4,100+ responses.

But as a proof of concept, the more important result was showing that a different form of institutional engagement was possible.

Strategic foresight did not have to remain a report or expert conversation. It could become something an audience could enter, navigate and respond to. Communications could work in both directions — helping WHO explain complex ideas while creating ways to listen back.

Future Us was featured at the 2024 Global Youth Health Forum, hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, as an example of a new approach to youth engagement in public health.

WHY IT MATTERED TO ME

Future Us changed the scale at which I thought about communications.

I had spent years learning how to investigate, explain and move ideas through different channels.

Future Us took me further: communications could be designed into an initiative from the beginning, alongside subject-matter experts, designers and developers.

It became an important bridge to how I work today. AI now allows me to take more of that process into my own hands — from asking the question and designing the experience to prototyping and building the tools that make it work.

PROJECT AT A GLANCE

PROOF OF CONCEPTA

new approach to youth engagement

EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Foresight turned into interaction

INSTITUTIONAL INNOVATION

Experimenting from within WHO