Babytown was developed as part of a three-week summer program, the Hexacago Health Academy (HHA), implemented at the University of Chicago in 2015. HHA aimed to increase interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and health among young people from the south and west sides of Chicago. As part of the program, participants engaged in game design modules where they developed ideas and low-fidelity prototypes of board games for various topics relevant to sexual and reproductive health. Youth-developed prototypes were then refined and developed into high fidelity board games by game designers, physicians, and researchers at the University of Chicago to produce the final game.

The process of Babytown with adolescents had three strengths:

1) Greater relatability for the target audience while simultaneously increasing the skills and knowledge of those who are participating in the design process

2) Facilitates critical thinking and reflection for those who are involved in the design process.

3) Augments the voices of young people by empowering them through the design process.

Through the Hexacago Health Academy, young people designed and played games intended to highlight implicit negative or false narratives. reproductive justice-based curriculum focused on the belief that all people should be able to decide when, how, and if, they would like to have children. Babytown was designed and tested in the Hexacago Health Academy.

This game is an adolescent that problematizes the narrative around teen parenthood. In the summer of 2015, 43 young people played Babytown and completed pre and post-surveys. These surveys were intended to gauge the effectiveness and usability of the game. 51% of participants identified as female, all participants were cisgender, and most participants identified as Black and/or Latinx. The mean age was 15 years and all young people participating resided in the Chicagoland area.