Young Users Articles & Videos

  • UX Must Revolutionize Education

    Jakob Nielsen discusses how to use UX to improve education, including of UX professionals, but more important for life-long learners.

  • Usability Testing with Minors

    Usability studies with children and teenagers are as valuable as any other user research, but require special attention to both participant recruiting and study facilitation. You can't act the same with kids as you would with adults.

  • Teenage Users Compared to Other Age Groups

    Age groups differ in how they use websites, the internet, and computers. Our findings from studying teenagers are contrasted with our other user research with children and adults: user experience designers should target their designs based on target audience behavior patterns.

  • 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.

  • 3 Myths About Teens and Tech

    Debunked myths about how teenagers use computers and technology, based on our usability research with users aged 13-17 years.

  • 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.

  • Designing for Children

    Designers should consider the physical and mental abilities of children, as well as utilize existing UX conventions. Here are 3 guidelines to consider when designing UX for children, based on our user research with users aged 3-12 years.

  • 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 and Millennials

    Kate Meyer summarizes her user research on how companies can appeal to social media natives.

  • UX Challenges in Designing for Millennials

    While similar in many ways to 'ordinary' users, today's young adults do have some distinguishing behaviors that UX designers should be aware of.

  • 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: Millennials' 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.

  • UX Must Revolutionize Education

    Jakob Nielsen discusses how to use UX to improve education, including of UX professionals, but more important for life-long learners.

  • Usability Testing with Minors

    Usability studies with children and teenagers are as valuable as any other user research, but require special attention to both participant recruiting and study facilitation. You can't act the same with kids as you would with adults.

  • Teenage Users Compared to Other Age Groups

    Age groups differ in how they use websites, the internet, and computers. Our findings from studying teenagers are contrasted with our other user research with children and adults: user experience designers should target their designs based on target audience behavior patterns.

  • 3 Myths About Teens and Tech

    Debunked myths about how teenagers use computers and technology, based on our usability research with users aged 13-17 years.

  • Designing for Children

    Designers should consider the physical and mental abilities of children, as well as utilize existing UX conventions. Here are 3 guidelines to consider when designing UX for children, based on our user research with users aged 3-12 years.

  • Social Media and Millennials

    Kate Meyer summarizes her user research on how companies can appeal to social media natives.

  • UX Challenges in Designing for Millennials

    While similar in many ways to 'ordinary' users, today's young adults do have some distinguishing behaviors that UX designers should be aware of.

  • 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: Millennials' 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 are multitaskers who move through websites rapidly, often missing the item they come to find. They're enraptured by social media but reserve it for private conversations and thus visit company sites from search engines.