Hi there! I’m now well into my time working with YLabs on a project called Ask Frankie. Time flies when you’re talking about social media, sexual and reproductive health and wellness, and what’s cool with Gen Z folks.
By way of a proper introduction, I’m Zach Witkin (he/him/his). I’m an east coaster through and through and still growing accustomed to the niceties of North Carolinians. I grew up in Massachusetts and did my undergraduate work in Development Studies at Brown University. After undergrad, I moved to Washington, DC to work in program management and strategic partnerships at Population Services International, and briefly served in the Peace Corps in Senegal, before being evacuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, I’m in the Global Health MPH program at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.
This summer, I’m working for YLabs, a global design and research organization working to improve health and economic opportunity for young people aged 10–24 years. YLabs designs, tests, and advocates for youth-driven services, goods, and communications platforms to address the biggest challenges to young people’s health and economic opportunity worldwide. We focus on sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, mental health, and economic inclusion.
With YLabs, I’m working on a project called Ask Frankie. We imagine Ask Frankie as a bilingual (English and Spanish) one-stop-shop app that will support young people to make informed decisions about their sexual health and wellness through tailored digitally-based decision-support tools and seamless connection to the sexual health products and services they need most.
We are currently in the Design Research and Rough Prototyping phase. We are testing rough prototypes and conducting user research on the specific needs of youth in the US, California specifically. Activities in this phase of the project include: seeking ethical approval for youth engagement; stakeholder mapping of potential information and service delivery partners; developing a recruitment strategy and toolkit for co-design and user research; conducting expert interviews; developing rough prototypes for testing; conducting user research with youth, and conducting two-week design sprints to test and build product prototypes. My role focuses on developing the stakeholder map for information and service provision, leading expert interviews and analysis, contributing technical sexual and reproductive health inputs for the rough prototypes, and conducting in-person co-design sessions with youth in the Central Valley of California.
So far, I have spent many hours reaching out to experts requesting a short interview. I’ve spoken with sex educators, public and private school teachers, leaders in city and state departments of public health, online sexual pleasure influencers, community organizers, program managers of youth-serving organizations, and more. It’s taken many follow-ups and random connections, but persistence pays off. I’ve also helped build out technically sound rough prototypes of chatbot conversations and decision trees designed to inform youth of their sexual and reproductive health options.
Looking forward to the rest of my summer with YLabs, I will continue to build technical skills around human centered design (HCD), sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and meaningful youth engagement. I will also continue to learn about the ins and outs of a smaller, newer, growing organization. Lastly, I am excited to spend ten days in California talking with youth about what they want and need out of a digital health product.
Stay tuned to see if the youth I meet in Fresno, CA find my east coast, millennial disposition cool…
-Zach