A website that truly meets the needs of children and young people
YoungMinds appointed Public Life to create their new website with a clear brief that we should involve young people in its design.
A survey revealed that approximately 60% of their website users were children and young people looking for information and advice. This came as a big surprise to the organisation as the website had been designed for a professional audience.
We worked with groups of children and young people to develop the design brief. We wanted to know what magazines they liked, what websites they used, what imagery they responded to; what they things they valued and what things totally turned them off!
The young people expressed a clear preference for images and graphics that were both about young people but also, crucially, created by them.
We worked with YoungMinds’ participation officer to design focus groups for children and young people, affected by issues of emotional wellbeing, aged from 5 – 23. Groups of around 10 young people moved in rapid succession between four or five fifteen-minute activity slots. In total we had five short sessions, which meant around 75 young people were consulted.
Most participants responded positively to the homepage design and we were delighted to hear lots of “wows” and “that looks great” when we showed it. Reactions included that it looks like “the type of website a young person would use” and “the sort of things we draw in school.”
But there were some things they really didn’t like. Our original navigation included audience sections for Professionals, Children and Teenagers. “Children” was fine, but “teenagers” was seen as a pejorative term. Young people prefer to be called young people. Their feedback really stressed the need to get the language and tone right.
