Youth Central gets a makeover
It seems to be the month for website makeovers.
Like Harry Potter, young people seem to be getting older all the time and Youth Central (youthcentral.vic.gov.au) certainly reflects this trend.
Youth Central is the latest to get a new look.
Overall, the site have shed the "kiddy" theme for a more mature look, aimed at a slightly older demographic.
The Youth Central site was previously built by young volunteers in what was a monumental effort, taking out the 2005 ATOM award for volunteer websites in its category. The site was even featured in the recent Local Government Technology Solutions Conference as an example of Web 2.0, but I find it hard to spot any Web 2.0 features. I think it certainly aspires to be, but isn't.
The site was definately in need of a redesign and I'll explain why. Overall, the result is a step up in professionalism, but still has some areas which could be addressed. For example, the website appears to ignore some of Jakob Neilsen's key findings in his 2005 study Usability of Website for Teenagers and the University of Melbourne's Youth Research paper “Young people, wellbeing and communication technologies”.
Here is my summary of the redesigned features and while you're there, check out our own Youth Portal which is also, very much, growing up.
Youth Central Before ....
(Courtesy of Internet Archive)
Youth Central after ...
Anyway, here is my analysis of some of the new features and design keys ...
It is interesting to see that the site, which had previously featured plenty of whitespace has gone for a bolder, heavier, moodier and darker look.
It is important to consider that the site isn't just aimed at a youth audience, it also has to appeal to youth workers, local government departments and other users. But in any case, this look is against the grain of sites like The Age and RMIT. From my own experience with youth focus and reference groups, I believe that this is something that teenagers at least, do prefer. As a general trend, young people seem to be more adapted to the web, and require less whitespace than older, more conservative web users. This is at least the case with the extremely popular Wyndham Youth Website, as well as a lot of MySpace web templates.
One of the most prominent features is the news ticker. This sort of page style fading news navigator has been used widely on websites since it featured on popular sites like afl.com.au and theage.com.au. It is accompanied by a new main menu item "News & Features", and the focus of this section is on new media such as podcasts and streaming video.
More effort seems to have gone into accessibility of the site, with ALT tags on all of the images this time around. Feedback from disabled users certainly helps to provide information on how to optimise this aspect.
Some subtle information architecture changes can make a big difference. Consider for example "About This Site", which has become "What is Youth Central ?". This link has moved to the top right with the secondary navigation and is very important. Without this link, first time users have very little context. Typically you'd expect "About This Site" to contain information on how to use the site and who built it (which it previously did), now the focus is more on "What is this site about and who is it aimed at and what benefits does it provide". This is a small change that could make a big difference.
Some slight changes have improved the main content menu of the site. For example "Get Local" becomes "Your Local Area". This would seem to make sense, because with main menus you really can't use vague terminology. If you do use vague terms, people get confused and will generally ignore whole sections of your site. Interestingly "Get Involved" has been dropped in favour of "News & Features" - young people probably don't like to be asked to get involved ... Anyway, the redesign didn't address what to me is a glaring problem - too many main links. Even a portal site such as this one should never have more than seven main links. If I was building the site, I'd try grouping some of the generic "Jobs & Careers", "Travel & Transport", "Managing Money" etc. into a single heading. You can still get to the content within a couple of clicks if you introduce other efficient methods of navigating the site. The "I want to" picklist did this on the old site, but it has been removed. Not sure why, I personally think this sort of user-driven navigation feature is a good way to go. It could have still been useful by renaming it. Instead, a picklist has been introduced for "Your Local Area", which I feel would be in reaction to user backlash from the "Get Local" main link as much as anything. The picklist is a good addition, but as previously stated - more should be done.
A good idea could be to either capture some basic info on the user (i.e where they live) and provide profiled information (such as jobs, events and council services in their area).
Finally, some of the more interactive features have been embedded into the homepage. This includes the poll and newsletter subscription, which gives the appearance of the site being slightly more interactive. And the external websites are differentiated a bit better this time around.
Conclusions
While the content on the site has improved, this redesign is more of a style sheet tweak and some patches over some glaring information architecture problems.
I generally don't think that this site provides as much user interaction and content contribution as it could.
It is still a bit conservative, as a government site should be, but doesn't really offer enough to attracted return visitors.
Comments (0)Federal Government's Strategy for Internet and Child Safety
Since 2000, the Australian government has stepped up in an ongoing war with the world wide web to stop the evils of spam, scams and Internet predators. As responsible Internet practitioners, we applaud the fact that the government is taking a serious interest in the Internet as a means of communication, even to the point of delivering their latest policies by webcast.
The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999 was the first step, which requires all Australian hosted websites without an adult verification system to be removed under authority. A blacklist of sites is maintained which is made available by all Internet Service Providers as part of their service. In terms of content provision, Australia has some of the most restrictive Internet censorship in the world. However many determined content creators simply move their activities offshore and are still able to do the same amount of damage.
According to newspaper reports, the Federal Government plans to spend $189 million to make the web safe for children, including $70 million software to help filter content. Add to this a $13.6 million new national alert service for online scams and Internet fraud.
The new privacy laws and powers to track down and investigate predators will hopefully help reduce Internet crime, but in itself does not really concern the web, as these crimes also occur offline. But what is of interest is that with content creation becoming ever increaingly difficult to police, especially with the advent of consumer Internet tools such as blogs, the focus of the government's campaigns have turned to Internet Service Providers.
The Federal government's new content filtering plans have huge ramifications on websites and the Internet in Australia. They are highly ambitious and Internet Service Providers have even labelled them "unworkable".
So what does this all mean for you and I ?
Censorship can be a good and a bad thing. Software censorship is still not an exact science. Sometimes it can unintentionally block important or useful content. And the determined have found ways to bypass filters in the past, and sometimes it only helps to push the nasty elements further underground. When it comes to strict censorship, governments need to strike a careful balance between freedom of speech, privacy and civil liberty.
But governments often miss the cause of the problem. Like other commodities, content creation works on a supply and demand basis. The war on drugs often focuses on drug dealers, but so long as there are people addicted to them, people will continue to sell them. Under current legislation at least (with the exception of email spam), porn and other evils do not simply jump out at you. As a general rule, you'd have to be searching for this stuff in the first place. The Australian Internet Safety Advisory Board provides practical advice on applying content filters for the protection of children but unfortunately consumers have been slow to take up filtering software and this has been the main reason for shifting the target back to the supply.
We would argue that along with these great new initiatives to make the web safer for all of us, the federal government should engage more in encouraging the generation of safe content alternatives which have genuine appeal to a young audience, thereby eliminating or redirecting the demand in the first place. Children are safer when you know that they are getting their interaction from a safe and supervised source. One step is by encouraging youth to actively participate in content contribution. This is what many are already doing through their MySpace and Facebook pages, but in a facilitated and supervised environment.
We believe that with almost every website having some sort of database behind it these days, even Australian web developers should undergo police and background checks when developing sensitive sites. This was just one of many measures taken to ensure child data protection, for example, in the Plan Australia website project, where child sponsorship presents many of these issues.
There are some great initiatives, such as the Victorian Government's Youth Central and even our own Youth Portals which have these aims in mind, addressing many of these things. Websites such as these can be installed in local government libraries and even schools to provide children with a wide range of interesting and enjoyable content that is importantly both safe and educational.
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