ABSTRACT
This chapter continues to explore the theme of pre-organised institutional participation by examining what kind of e-participation services the Finnish authorities provide for young people, and what kind of services young people themselves would prefer. As a starting point, the authors acknowledge that even if research has identified many problems with previous forms of e-participation, there are still good reasons to continue developing it. Participation through digital means is an increasingly important facet of young people’s relationship with society and affects greatly their well-being. However, e-participation services are still often designed from expert-led top-down perspectives so that the genuine needs of users are ignored. The chapter describes a special research and development project in which these challenges were met by involving dozens of young people in planning and testing a new e-participation service, the Virtual Council. The development of the service followed practices of human-centred design that emphasises the inclusion of users in the design process. Thus, when collaborating with young people, the researchers and developers paid close attention to what kind of needs and aspirations they themselves have regarding e-participation.
