Future Technology Workshops as an Approach for Co-Creating Digital Mental Health Technology: Methodological Reflections

Increasing mental health challenges among young people call for support that is accessible, flexible, and tailored to their needs. Although digital health interventions (DHIs) present a promising approach, engagement in such interventions depends on users’ perceptions of the interventions’ credibility, trust, and relevance. Young people’s active involvement in co-creating DHIs designed for them is therefore essential; however, literature on digital health often inconsistently describes or critically reflects on such co-creation processes as well as choices for facilitating them. In response, this method-focused article contributes to implementation-oriented knowledge about using future technology workshops (FTWs) with young people and adult stakeholders in upper secondary schools in Norway, where developing DHIs served as the context of application, not the primary outcome. We report the implementation of four FTWs structured around three phases—critique phase, utopian phase, and implementation phase—and provide practice-based guidance on facilitating FTWs, including facilitator positionality, group dynamics, accessibility, safeguarding, and producing actionable workshop outputs. Our reflections draw on documentation generated during the facilitation process, comprising post-workshop audio reflections, planning and debrief meeting notes, iterative action plans, and the first author’s research diary. The workshops involved 55 pupils 15–19 years old, 14 adult stakeholders, and seven facilitators. Guided by hermeneutic phenomenology and informed by collaborative autoethnography and structured team reflection, we synthesized recurring methodological issues and traced how they generated adaptations across workshops. We highlight five methodological recommendations for implementing FTWs in school-based youth mental health contexts: (1) practicing humble facilitation, (2) promoting radical reflection, (3) designing for diversity, (4) ensuring emotional security, and (5) producing structured output. Together, the recommendations support meaningful youth participation and offer transferable guidance for facilitators conducting participatory, action-oriented research in sensitive settings. Further research should explore how FTWs function across different cultural, institutional, and thematic settings.