New interest-based social action as a design approach for youth community reconfiguring in the post-pandemic era

Authors

Haoyu Dong, School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, ChinaFollow
Jun Zhang, School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, ChinaFollow

Abstract

The pandemic has led to increased social distancing and feelings of depression among youth, a significant shift from their previous engagement in activities that enhanced their social skills and community involvement. With the easing of the pandemic, youth re-engaged with their social contacts and skills by participating in new interest-based activities, such as urban camping and frisbee sports. However, the process of how these activities foster youth social behavior changes remains under-explored. This study investigates how emerging interest-based activities facilitate youth social behav-ior and community identity, providing guidance for youth community design. Through a cross-disciplinary sociology-design framework, the "Youth Social Action Reconfigura-tion Framework," implemented via co-design, this study reveals that youth with new in-terests can establish new community connections under the prolonged impact of COVID-19. This study suggests an interest group service system as a community build-ing scheme that can motivate youth social action and community engagement.

Keywords

youth community design; new interest-based social action; community reconfiguration; post-pandemic era;

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.984

Citation

Dong, H., and Zhang, J. (2024) New interest-based social action as a design approach for youth community reconfiguring in the post-pandemic era, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.984

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Conference Track

Research Paper