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KID’S Living Lab: Testing a new methodology to anticipate challenges affecting children and young people

KID’S Living Lab, adapts the Atlas of Weak Signals methodology to explore emerging changes affecting childhood and turn future scenarios into concrete actions.

• Oct 23, 2026

KID’S Living Lab is a collaborative initiative led by KID’S CLUSTER, l’Institut d’Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya / Fab Lab Barcelona, Descoberta and D’EP Institut, with the support of ACCIÓ. It combines foresight, child and youth participation, and collaborative innovation to anticipate emerging challenges affecting children’s well-being, from technology and emotional health to education, leisure, and social relationships.

During June and July, four pilot sessions brought together companies, municipal professionals, social researchers, and young people to test a methodology adapted from the Fab Lab Barcelona’s Atlas of Weak Signals methodology, which identifies early signs of change and explores their potential impact on childhood and family life. The pilots helped refine the methodology, making it clearer, more accessible, and adaptable to different contexts. The result is a practical tool to help organizations anticipate emerging needs and translate insights into new services, projects, and policies.

By placing children’s, young people’s, and families’ perspectives at the centre, KID’S Living Lab aims to develop more meaningful responses to future challenges across education, health, leisure, culture, and public services.

Atlas of Weak Signals for Childhood

KID’S Living Lab, adapts the Fab Lab Barcelona’s Atlas of Weak Signals methodology to explore emerging changes affecting childhood and turn future scenarios into concrete actions.

What is changing in the world of childhood, and how might these changes shape children’s well-being in the years to come? 

The Atlas of Weak Signals for Childhood offers a practical way to explore these questions through a toolkit of cards and canvases designed to identify early signs of change, imagine possible futures, and develop actionable responses. Weak signals are early indicators of potential transformation: emerging social debates, minority behaviours, new technologies, or changing practices that have little impact today but could significantly shape the future. By identifying and interpreting these signals while they are still emerging, we can anticipate challenges and explore opportunities before they become widespread. The methodology reinterprets the original Atlas of Weak Signals through five dimensions of children’s well-being. It connects emerging changes with the real-life challenges faced by children, families, educators, institutions, and businesses working in the sector. Combining strategic design, speculative thinking, and maker education, the toolkit can be used by facilitators in both formal and informal educational settings.

Children become active participants in shaping the future. Their interpretations, experiences, and ideas are at the heart of the process. Through co-creation and speculative thinking, participants imagine scenarios 100 years into the future, using critical imagination to explore how society might evolve.

The Tool

5 Dimensions of Children Welbeing

Each signal, area of ​​opportunity, friction, and trigger is linked to one or more dimensions. The group’s challenge determines the entry point.

1. Physical and Healthy Environments: Nutrition, physical activity, rest, healthcare services, and habitability. The child’s body and the space in which they grow.
2. Mental and Emotional: Mental health, emotional regulation, affective bonds, and social relationships. The child’s inner world.
3. Social and Community: Inclusion, participation, and social capital. The child’s relationship with their community, neighborhood, and institutions.
4. Educational: Learning opportunities, informal environments, and future-ready skills. How and where children learn today.
5. Spiritual and Values-based: Identity, values, and the capacity for moral decision-making. A free and conscious self within a complex environment.

Six Types of Cards

Each category serves a distinct function within the dynamic. Weak signals are at the core; the others help to open up, create tension, and ground ideas.

Weak Signals: For exploring what is changing: behaviors, technologies, and dynamics that have not yet reached the mainstream.
Areas of Opportunity: For opening up possibilities. Specific domains for intervention within each dimension.
Triggers: For challenging assumptions. Provocative questions that spark lateral thinking.
Frictions: For identifying obstacles and ethical dilemmas: factors that might resist or block change.
Stakeholders: For mapping the ecosystem: allies, beneficiaries, and agents of change. Blank cards

The 17 weak signals

Two canvases, in sequence

Canvas 1 generates the input material for Canvas 2. They can be completed in a single session or in separate sessions.

This process brings these distant futures closer to the present, translating imagined scenarios into “alternative presents”: concrete actions that can be implemented over the next ten years. In this way, the Atlas of Weak Signals for Childhood connects long-term foresight with practical action, helping communities and organizations anticipate emerging needs and develop new approaches to children’s well-being.

You can find the tools for free here: https://fablabbcn.github.io/kidslivinglab/#metodologia