Unexpected audience insight
As part of Girlsday, an initiative of VHTO (the national expertise agency for women and girls in beta and technology), Unc Inc gave a workshop Interaction Design to girls from the second grade of VWO at Hyperion Lyceum Amsterdam. We let them think about how girls from 10 to 15 can be made enthusiastic for beta, technology and ICT by means of a website or app. Sixty girls of that age in one room yielded fun and interesting information.
As real interaction designers we delved into the target group together. The group was divided into teams of five to six students. Each team was tasked with creating its own persona; A persona is an archetype of a target group. He or she is given a gender, name, age and other demographic characteristics. Then things like goals, needs and media usage were added. A complete persona can serve as a handle when designing a product or service. In this case, an average girl between the ages of 10 and 15. What does she like and what doesn't she like? What mobile devices and apps does she use and what websites does she visit?
Als echte interactie ontwerpers zijn we samen in de doelgroep gedoken. De groep werd verdeeld in teams van vijf a zes leerlingen. Elk team kreeg de opdracht een eigen persona maken; Een persona is een archetype van een doelgroep. Hij of zij krijgt een geslacht, naam, leeftijd en andere demografische kenmerken. Vervolgens werden zaken zoals doelen, behoeftes en mediagebruik toegevoegd. Een compleet persona kan dienen als handvat bij het ontwerpen van een product of dienst. In dit geval een doorsnee meisje van tussen de 10 en 15 jaar. Wat vindt ze leuk en wat niet? Welke mobiele apparaten en apps gebruikt ze en welke websites bezoekt ze?
What do their personas look like?
The persona is a cross-section of the target audience, so logically our persona would have an age between 10 and 15. While 12 or 13 is about half way through, our girls majorly chose a slightly older persona of 14. As many as 9 out of 10 groups had a persona of 14 years old. The other group had a persona of 13. This principle is also often seen in TV series where the actors are actually slightly older than the character they are playing.
Laptop, tablet or mobile?
Before designing an app or website, it is useful to know which device, also called devices, is used the most by the target audience. The big winner was mobile, with percentages of 50% to 75%. Runner-up is the laptop/decker with about 15% to 45%. Tablets are used a lot less, only 0% to 10% with an outlier to 20%.
We also did a brief poll to see what the breakdown was between iOS, Android and Windows. Apple proved to be by far the most popular.
What apps are being used and what websites are being visited?
As an example, on the persona template there were some examples of social media platforms and digital brands, such as Twitter and Instagram. Here they could indicate which one they think their persona uses. Instagram, Snapchat, Spotify and Youtube was liked by all personas and thus scored the full 100%. The big surprise was Facebook; Which apparently is repelled by this generation. Almost none of the girls had Facebook and only two personas had Facebook in their list. In addition, they were given the opportunity to make their own suggestions and with convincing enthusiasm, most personas liked Netflix, which was not on the template. Other suggestions included Tumblr and the playback app Musically. The result:
What are their hobbies and what do they enjoy?
To make an app or website attractive to the relevant target group, it is useful to know what they like and what they don't. A whole list of activities the girls like to engage in came up, such as:
Music: Both listening to music and making music. For example, Spotify is one of the most popular apps and they wrote down singing, playing piano and guitar, among others.
Sports: Girls love exercise, too! Among the sports mentioned were horseback riding, dancing, basketball, track and field, surfing, swimming, and tennis.
Drawing: As many as half of the personas like to draw.
Social: The girls like being with friends and a big fan of social media. Even vlogging was mentioned by several groups as a hobby of their persona.
Technology: They also browse the Internet quite a bit and like to watch movies. For this they often need WiFi.
There was a bit more disagreement about other activities. For example, gaming was both enjoyed and totally disliked. Some girls also said they didn't like math and science, while others disagreed, saying they liked it.
What they generally did not like was bullying, being broke, pieces of text without images and commercials.
Unexpected audience research
In retrospect, the course turned out to be not only very fun and educational, but also a goldmine of valuable information. Of course, it is not a good scientific study and some of the results can be debated, but overall it gives a fairly global glimpse into the experience of an Amsterdam girl of 14.