While young people are arguably the most tech-savvy generation, until now there has been no single NSW Government location with all the information they want to know, such as moving out of home, managing money and finding a job.
Instead, information has been spread across several agencies and independent websites.
The team started a project to build stronger connections with young people and support their transition to adulthood, beginning with a fact-finding mission.
Our research
Before we took steps to create a meaningful online space with youth-specific content, research was conducted to:
- analyse 12 industry reports on the digital behaviour of young people
- survey 59 stakeholders across 35 agencies to understand issues young people are facing in NSW
- complete audience testing with 43 young people across regional and metro areas.
Results showed that:
- young people in regional NSW discover events and activities through word of mouth, social media, websites (including local council) and print
- young people in urban NSW areas discover events and activities through social media and word of mouth. This cohort prefers in-person events in their community
- young people aged 18 - 24 make up 16.07% (1,881,849 users) of website traffic to NSW Government
- users across the younger demographic view 2.29 pages per session.
We used this research to understand young people as we created a centralised area dedicated to content for them on nsw.gov.au.
Creating a hub for young people in NSW
The primary audience of the updated destination is young people aged 12 to 24 years, who need help to move through key life milestones like getting their licence, getting a job and enrolling in further education. The secondary audience is parents, carers, and youth-specific professionals.
Content topics for young people
- Financial help
- Career advice
- Leaving care
- Getting consent
- How to get a driver or rider licence
- Understanding drinking or drug use behaviour and how to get help
- Things to do, such as holiday fun for regional youth, work experience, volunteering, voting and youth organisations
- Information and resources for learning life skills such as
There is even useful information for professionals working with young people, such as Youth Justice NSW, Advocate for Children and Young People (ACYP) and Youth Week.
Youth week is a week-long celebration held in April each year that is organised by young people, for young people, in communities across the state. It is an opportunity to attend live events, have their voices heard, showcase talents, take part in competitions and have fun with celebrations!
User-focused design
For the NSW Government to connect with young people from all walks of life and build trusted relationships, tone of voice, imagery and visual design were recognised as an important part of the process.
Content was designed to appeal to young people, to be easy to scan and navigate, and to be easy for people from CALD communities to understand. This included using plenty of white space and displaying content in small, meaningful paragraphs so it could be scanned quickly.
It was important to use imagery that relates to young people, so real, natural images of this age group have been used throughout and the content has been designed for mobile.
Results
NSW is home to the largest number of young people in Australia, with more than 3.2 million young people living in NSW. The new section allows NSW Government agencies to publish information that is relevant to young people in one place. This gives the content a wider reach and ensures relevant information is found by the right audience.
Pages relating to young people saw total of 67,690 page views and a higher-than-average time on page of 2 minutes and 20 seconds over the past 12 months.
The outcome is a single location for young people to access NSW Government services and information relevant to them. Explore the Young People hub for yourself!