Why a club might use this
Young people build applied innovation capability and partners receive prototypes shaped by affected users.
Use it when
- Secondary or tertiary students, educators, makers, designers and community partner organisations. Use when a partner owns a challenge suitable for iterative prototyping.
Before the club starts
- Lab safety, tool permissions, platform accounts and accessibility assessed.
- Written IP, open-source, data and prototype-ownership agreement.
- Screened mentors trained in co-design, boundaries and not taking over student work.
Capacity guide
- Likely cost
- $$$ — lab access, materials, devices and technical supervision; use capped prototype budgets.
- Lead time
- 12–18 weeks.
- People
- 6–10 members and partners including educators, technical supervisors and safeguarding lead.
Controls and safeguards
- No tool, chemical, electrical or online activity proceeds beyond the approved risk level.
- Students do not use personal accounts or expose identifiable user data in prototypes.
- CRITICAL — iterative work with minors, tools, online platforms, user research and IP requires layered technical and child-safe controls.
What to measure
- Teams completing each safety and ethics gate.
Follow-up: Provide each team and partner a versioned handover pack within seven days; any continuation becomes a separately approved project with fresh consent and risk review.