Designing a Web Site for Young People: The challenges of appealing to a diverse and fickle audience 
Rose Cardiff, Tate, United Kingdom
http://www.tate.org.uk/youngtate/
Designing Web sites for young people (age 13-25) can be particularly challenging. The target age range is large and represents diverse tastes and opinions. Young people can be a fickle audience, and designs that are deemed ‘cool’ one minute can rapidly grow out of fashion. Finding ways to keep up with changing tastes and fashions without having to pour in large amounts of resources can prove difficult for museums and galleries. This paper examines how to involve young people in the Web design process to ensure that the resulting Web site represents their tastes and ideas. Taking the new Young Tate Web site as a case study, this paper outlines a process for working with young people in order to develop a site that meets their requirements. This includes looking at how to set young people’s expectations, resolve conflicting opinions, commission content from young people, and incorporate user-generated content into the Web site. The paper will also examine the role of Web 2.0 technologies in relation to their appeal to younger audiences. In particular, the paper will use the Raw Canvas Artlookers Podcast as an example of how young people can create and broadcast their own audio specifically designed to appeal to their peers.
Session: User Contributed Content [Contributed Content]
Keywords: young people, podcast, user-centred design, Web 2.0, user-generated content, contributed content
