gogo
12-14-2007, 08:32 AM
I came across an interesting report from a usability expert, which surprised me by finding teenagers less successful at using sites than adults - not all are wizards.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/teenagers.html
[quote][No Boring Sites
Teens frequently complained about sites that they found boring. Being boring is the kiss of death in terms of keeping teens on your site. That's one stereotype our study confirmed: teens have a short attention span and want to be stimulated. That's also why they leave sites that are difficult to figure out. Teenagers don't like to read a lot on the Web. They get enough of that at school. Also, the reading skills of many teenagers are not what one might hope for, especially among younger teens. Sites that were easy to scan or that illustrated concepts visually were strongly preferred to sites with dense text.
One surprising finding in this study: teenagers don't like tiny font sizes any more than adults do. We've often warned websites about using small text (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020819.html) because of the negative implications for senior citizens -- and even people in their late 40s whose eyesight has begun to decline. We have always assumed that tiny text is predominant on the Web because most Web designers are young and still have perfect vision, so we didn't expect to find issues with font sizes when testing even younger users. However, small type often caused problems or provoked negative comments from the teen users in our study. Even though most teens are sufficiently sharp-eyed, they move too quickly and are too easily distracted to attend to small text.
What's good? The following interactive features all worked well because they let teens do things rather than simply sit and read:
Online quizzes
Forms for providing feedback or asking questions
Online voting
Games
Features for sharing pictures or stories
Message boards
Forums for offering and receiving advice
Features for creating a website or otherwise adding contentThese interactive features allow teenagers to make their mark on the Internet and express themselves in various ways -- some small, some big. Differences Between Age Groups
The following table summarizes the main differences in Web design approaches for young children, teenagers, and adults. (The findings about children are from our separate tests with 6-12 year-old users (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/children.html).) ....etc
/QUOTE]
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/teenagers.html
[quote][No Boring Sites
Teens frequently complained about sites that they found boring. Being boring is the kiss of death in terms of keeping teens on your site. That's one stereotype our study confirmed: teens have a short attention span and want to be stimulated. That's also why they leave sites that are difficult to figure out. Teenagers don't like to read a lot on the Web. They get enough of that at school. Also, the reading skills of many teenagers are not what one might hope for, especially among younger teens. Sites that were easy to scan or that illustrated concepts visually were strongly preferred to sites with dense text.
One surprising finding in this study: teenagers don't like tiny font sizes any more than adults do. We've often warned websites about using small text (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020819.html) because of the negative implications for senior citizens -- and even people in their late 40s whose eyesight has begun to decline. We have always assumed that tiny text is predominant on the Web because most Web designers are young and still have perfect vision, so we didn't expect to find issues with font sizes when testing even younger users. However, small type often caused problems or provoked negative comments from the teen users in our study. Even though most teens are sufficiently sharp-eyed, they move too quickly and are too easily distracted to attend to small text.
What's good? The following interactive features all worked well because they let teens do things rather than simply sit and read:
Online quizzes
Forms for providing feedback or asking questions
Online voting
Games
Features for sharing pictures or stories
Message boards
Forums for offering and receiving advice
Features for creating a website or otherwise adding contentThese interactive features allow teenagers to make their mark on the Internet and express themselves in various ways -- some small, some big. Differences Between Age Groups
The following table summarizes the main differences in Web design approaches for young children, teenagers, and adults. (The findings about children are from our separate tests with 6-12 year-old users (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/children.html).) ....etc
/QUOTE]