Help Me Keep My Stuff Safe: Designing a Collaborative Online Repository for Young People in Care

Managing the personal information and possessions of young people in out of home care presents unique challenges. Photos, documents and mementos are easily lost or left behind at changes of care placement. Lack of access to such personal artefacts negatively impacts care decisions, identity construction and social relationships. Prior work identified the potential for an online repository (a 'virtual locker') to manage personal materials in this context. This research examines tensions related to privacy and control that impact on the design of the virtual locker. Through workshops conducted with young care leavers and social workers we derived design objectives and, based on these, we propose mechanisms for resolving the tensions identified. Informed by user evaluation of a 'virtual locker' prototype, we develop heuristics for design of personal content systems in shifting social contexts. In this work, we identify the need for personal control of content, balanced governance and flexible collaboration tools. These heuristics and associated insights contribute to theoretical and design work related to personal and social content systems.