The Government Digital Service (GDS) provides a design system that ensures services are built with consistency and accessibility in mind. But most government services are designed for adults (who generally have previous experience of similar services). On our project we faced the interesting question of whether the design system works as well when designing for young people (our users are likely to be between 15 and 18 years old).
Even in the Department for Education (DfE), most services are for adults and therefore this is where most design experience is.
GDS design principles focus on simplicity and ease of use, so our hypothesis was that they would generally work for young people as well. But we suspected that there might be exceptions and we wanted to explore what these could be.
Desk research
We started with desk research to understand what’s already known about designing digital services for young people.
In terms of design principles, the most useful source we found was the Neilson Norman Group, whose work on designing for teens included research with 100 people between the ages of 13 and 17. They refuted a number of common stereotypes and found that teens often overestimate their web skills but perform less effectively than adults due to impatience, limited reading skills and undeveloped research capabilities.
We also found research from Meta. Their report on how to design for young people emphasised trust, transparency and control while addressing the challenges of age-appropriate design.
A lot of research seemed to focus on younger children rather than teens. For example, we found reports from the Digital Futures Commission and the Children’s Design Guide.
Analysing all the information we found on designing for young people, we came up with 8 themes.
1. Support diversity and wellbeing
Young people have varied experiences, backgrounds and needs. Some may feel confident and can be proactive about their next steps, while others may be overwhelmed or uncertain. Our content and design must be inclusive, recognising different levels of confidence and providing reassurance where needed. Accessibility is critical - ensuring that neurodiverse users, those with disabilities, or those facing socio-economic challenges can engage effectively with the service.
2. Involve young people and respect their views
Working with young people ensures that the service meets their expectations and reflects their perspectives. While we’ve not had the time during alpha to do true co-design, we’ve found that involving them in research, testing and content development leads to insights that challenge our assumptions. Respecting their views also means designing a service that avoids a patronising tone and instead acknowledges their independence and ability to make informed decisions.
3. Provide straightforward, relatable content
Young users respond best to content that is direct and to the point. Jargon, overly formal language or dense text can be immediate barriers to engagement. Instead, we focus on clear, concise and conversational language. In future we’re keen to build in examples and scenarios that feel relevant to their experiences.
One of the most striking findings from our usability research has been the need to keep wording on each screen to an absolute minimum. We've consistently seen that young users rarely read beyond a heading and a call to action. Long explanations, even when well-written and useful, are often ignored. Instead, we focus on:
- short, scannable text: Breaking up information into bite-sized chunks. For example, our homepage has just 2 lines of text before the start button.
- clear headings and subheadings: Making it easy to find important information at a glance. For example, our support screens generally have no more than 2 or 3 paragraphs under each heading.
- action-oriented language: Guiding users through the service with clear, unambiguous instructions. For example, our users were confused by a link that said ‘How do I get there?’ and wanted it instead to say ‘Show location on map’.
- progressive disclosure: Providing deeper information contextually and only when a user chooses to engage further. For example, we explain course types (like A Levels or T Levels) on the search results screen and not at the beginning of the user journey.
- splitting screens up: In general, we’ve found it better to split a complex or wordy screen into several parts. For example, we replaced a single screen asking about career aspirations and preferred subjects with separate screens asking the questions individually. Even though this slightly lengthened the user journey, the reduction in cognitive load related to each screen landed well with all users.
4. Prioritise speed and responsiveness
Young people have little patience for slow-loading pages or complex navigation. If the service doesn’t feel quick and intuitive, they’ll leave. Performance optimisation will be crucial if our project moves into beta and we start to build a live service. We’ve also seen that while users are likely to use mobile devices at home, they may use the same service on larger screens at school, so responsive design becomes really important.
5. Be visual but don't overdo It
Visual elements - such as icons, images, and videos - can make content more engaging and digestible. However, young people are also highly sensitive to overuse of graphics, animations or gimmicks that make a site feel cluttered or childish. Many people told us that they recognise and trust government or DfE branding on our prototype but can find websites following government design principles to be bland. This is not necessarily a bad thing unless it puts them off from using the service but is something we’d want to explore further in beta.
6. Encourage exploration
Many young people don’t know where to start when thinking about their future. The service needs to help them explore different options without overwhelming them or making them feeling locked into a particular path. Providing multiple entry points, interactive tools and flexible ways to browse content can help them discover possibilities they hadn’t considered before while not making them decide between too many choices at the same time.
7. Build in safety and transparency
Teens are often unaware of how their data is used online or how to assess the reliability of information. We need to build trust by making data usage and retention policies clear and avoiding misleading content. This will ensure our service retains the trust that most young people instinctively feel towards government websites. Safety also means designing the service in a way that doesn’t overwhelm young users or leave them feeling more uncertain than before they started.
In terms of transparency around the use of AI in our service, we want to explore this further. Initial findings suggest that young people generally don’t have a strong reaction either way to the use of AI and increasingly see it as an inherent part of many digital services.
8. Be aware of commercial and other influences
Young people are heavily influenced by advertising, social media, and peer recommendations. They may struggle to distinguish between neutral advice and marketing-driven content. It’s important that our service remains unbiased and transparent, clearly signposting the sources of information and avoiding any sense of commercial influence.
Learning from other DfE projects
In general, our research backs up what we found by talking to those colleagues in DfE who have been involved in projects for young people. For example, one project which had done research with 16 years olds categorised young people as ‘app savvy’ rather than ‘tech savvy’. They found that while young people are experts in the apps they use regularly (such as TikTok and SnapChat), they can find websites impenetrable and struggle with digital content that adults take for granted, like emails.
Another team, that has worked with young care leavers, emphasised that young people:
- can be particularly impacted by additional needs as they’ve had less chance to develop coping mechanisms
- respond well to colours, images and interactive tools
- preferred a warmer tone of voice than used on typical government services
- overwhelmingly use mobile devices outside of school, though they may have older models
- don't yet have well developed research skills
- are unlikely to have mental models that align with typical users of government services (for example, they don’t relate to terminology and concepts that adults use)
- generally trust the government but can find government websites rather cold
- don’t read long content, even if they perceive it to be useful
Next steps
We’re continuing to refine our prototype through testing with young people, gathering feedback and iterating on our designs. As we move forward, we will log any deviations from the GDS design system, so we have a clear audit trail of design decisions.
In beta, we will start to explore the challenge of how we apply these design principles to the longer form supporting content we think that some users would benefit from.
In summary, it feels that following GDS design principles unless there’s clear evidence to the contrary has worked well on this project. So we'll continue to to only diverge from standard government design if we really need to.