Young Users Articles & Videos

  • UX Research with Minors: Consent vs. Assent

    When conducting UX research with minors, you must obtain consent from a parent or legal guardian and assent from the minor participant.

  • Five Questions for University UX Professionals

    Prospective university students are selective when applying to schools. They share many of the same questions and expect communications to be personalized.

  • Usability Testing with Minors: 16 Tips

    To guarantee an effective study with users under 18-years old, recruit extra participants, design a child-friendly lab, prepare a plethora of age-appropriate tasks, and avoid being too authoritative.

  • Children’s Exposure to Digital Technology Causes Parental Anxiety

    North American parents are concerned with technology’s impact on children’s social and emotional development, Chinese parents worry about health and academics

  • Teenager’s UX: Designing for Teens

    Teens are (over)confident in their web abilities, but they perform worse than adults. Lower reading levels, impatience, and undeveloped research skills reduce teens’ task success and require simple, relatable sites.

  • Children’s UX: Usability Issues in Designing for Young People

    New research with users aged 3–12 shows that children have gained substantial proficiency in using websites and apps since our last studies, though many designs are still not optimized for younger users. Designing for children requires distinct usability approaches, including targeting content narrowly for children of different ages.

  • Designing for Kids: Cognitive Considerations

    Children’s cognitive skills are still developing, so their reasoning abilities are weaker than those of adults. To help them successfully use an interface, designs should display clear, specific instructions, leveraging kids’ mental models and prior knowledge.

  • Design for Kids Based on Their Stage of Physical Development

    As kids’ physical development throughout childhood changes, so do their physical abilities, constraints, and device preferences. Touch gestures such as swiping and tapping big targets are easy for all children, but fine mouse or trackpad gestures such as dragging are hard for young kids.

  • Social Media Natives: Growing Up with Social Networking

    Social media use has altered how Millennials think about friendships and relationships. This impact stands as a valuable reminder of the consequences of UX-design decisions.

  • University Websites: Top 10 Design Guidelines

    An effective university website can increase conversions for prospective students and alumni, strengthen institutional credibility and brand, improve user satisfaction, and save the university time and money.

  • Young Adults/Millennials as Web Users (Ages 18–25)

    Members of the often misunderstood Millennial generation exhibit unique behaviors and approaches to digital interfaces. They are confident and error prone, and they have high expectations of websites.

  • Young Adults Appreciate Flat Design More than Their Parents Do

    18-to-25-year olds gave slightly higher ratings of flat designs than older adults did. That increased aesthetic appeal may not be worth the cost of flat design.

  • Millennials as Digital Natives: Myths and Realities

    As the new largest generation in the American workforce, Millennials are subject to rampant speculation, investigation, and even some moral panic. These young adults have high expectations about user interfaces and are confident in their skills, but they’re error prone and their tendency to multitask reduces their task efficiency.

  • Page Parking: Multi-Tab Mania

    Browser tabs separate the stages of collection and comparing and serve as memory aids to keep many alternate pages available for consideration as users are shopping or researching. 7 UX guidelines support this user behavior, which is particularly common among younger users.

  • Large Touchscreens: What's Different?

    Designing for larger-scale touchscreens requires particular attention to input, screen focus, and privacy.

  • College Students on the Web

    Students use websites and social media extensively to complete various different tasks. They are multitaskers who appreciate simple, easy-to-use websites and products.