Summary

We tested the way teenagers use real sites designed for teens, the teens' areas of mainsteam websites, and mainstream sites that didn't have dedicated areas for teens. The report contains 61 design guidelines that will make websites more suited for teenagers and easier for them to use.

> Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox about the findings
> See sample chapter as thumbnail pages

The guidelines are based on usability tests of the following sites:

• School resources (BBC Schools, California State University, and SparkNotes)
• Health (Australian Drug Foundation, KidsHealth, National Institute on Drug Abuse)
• News and entertainment (BBC Teens, ChannelOne.com, MTV, and The Orange County Register)
• E-commerce (American Eagle Outfitters, Apple, Volcom)
• Corporate sites (McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, The Principal Financial Group, and Procter & Gamble)
• Government (Australian Government main portal, California's Department of Motor Vehicles, and the U.S. White House)
• Non-profits (Alzheimer's Association, The Insite, Museum of Tolerance, National Wildlife Federation)

Plus interviews with the test participants about their favorite websites.

Richly illustrated with 140 screenshots, showing designs that worked well for teenagers as well as designs that caused them usability problems.

This is not a survey: Virtually every other report you will find about teenagers and the Internet will be based on questionnaires or focus groups, which are not valid methods for researching interaction design. What teens say, and what they do are two different things. This report is based on direct observation of live behavior in one-on-one sessions.

Table of Contents

131-page report

1. Executive Summary
   • User Research
   • Focus on Web Usability
   • Misconceptions About Teenagers
   • No Boring Sites
   • Differences Between Age Groups
   • Teenage Opportunities
2. Research Overview
   • Procedure
   • Websites Studied
3. Success Rates and Satisfaction Ratings
   • Success Ratings
   • Satisfaction Ratings
   • Correlation Between Success and Satisfaction
4. Teenagers on the Web
   • Why Teens Use the Web
   • Search Engines
   • Websites That Teens Like
   • Stereotypes about Teenagers
   • Most Teens Are Not Web Experts
   • Age Preference Continuum
   • "Boring": A Common Theme
   • Advice from Teens
   • Balancing What Teens Want and What They Need
5. Usability Design Guidelines
   • Visual Design
   • Interaction Design
   • Promotional Design
   • Multimedia
   • Navigation
   • Search
   • Writing for The Web
   • E-commerce
6. Teenagers' Favorite Websites
   • Community
   • Entertainment
   • Games
   • Content
   • Shopping
   • Search
   • Sports
7. Methodology
   • Overview
   • Participants
   • About the Sites Studied
   • Exploratory Tasks
   • Site-Specific Tasks
   • Testing Environment

What You Get

• Checklist of 61 specific design recommendations: review your website for these 61 items, and you will no doubt discover several things that need improvement.
• Description of how teenagers behave when using a wide variety of sites, including both teen-specific sites and mainstream sites. The report includes extensive quotes from the teens (often colorful, because they were frequently annoyed). Learn from the users' comments and reactions to common design mistakes in the websites we tested.
• 140 screenshots of Web pages with descriptions of why they worked well for teens or caused them problems in usability testing.
• $100,000 of user research with real teenagers at 0.1% of the cost; find out how real teens behave when they use real websites.
• Test methodology description, allowing you to run your own user tests of your own design.
• How to keep teens on your site, avoid boring them, and gain their business.

Who Should Read This Report?

• Anybody who is responsible for the design or strategy for websites that are targeted at teenagers or that have content or services of interest to teens.

Running a similar international usability study yourself to collect comparative design lessons from a large number of websites would cost about $100,000.

Please help us continue publishing low-price reports by buying a site license if you have colleagues who will read the report. If you only need it for yourself, then that's obviously what the single-user license is for. If somebody "gives" you a copy, then please buy a download anyway to keep prices down in the future.

Download Report (from eSellerate) $149 for the PDF file (131 pages) $288 for site license that allows you make multiple copies and distribute within your organization