Today we were asked to revisit a competition design brief from last year and complete it in teams of four. This exercise was helpful in preparing us for this responsive module. It allowed to see what collaborating on a project can be like and also got us used to picking apart a brief. Each person in the group were allocated a different area to research and a various element to individually design. I researched the demographics of Yahoo! and also looked into the average age of Internet users today. Here are my findings from the research:
Yahoo Live Brief – Target Audience Research
Yahoo! was designed
as a searchable directory of Internet websites. The primary target audience is
the web surfer, and this is still relevant in 2015. As they develop the
technology of providing each surfer with the unique search results desired,
they have become a valuable resource to advertisers. The emphasis of
activities, acquisitions, mergers, beta testing, etc. is toward the
accomplishment of better search results for the web surfer. However, with more
and more children using the internet to simply surf, search engines like Yahoo
will need to change the way they function in order to cater for the younger
users.
- · Children using internet from age of three, study finds
- · Children spend twice as long online as their parents think they do and start using the internet at the average age of three, a study has found.
- · Many are viewing self-harm, violent pornography, animal cruelty and eating disorder websites and more than a quarter admit they pretend to be older to access certain sites.
- · They are spending so much time online that one in three now struggles with offline activities that require concentration such as reading a book, according to the report.
- · The survey, by parenting site Netmums.com, disclosed that parents are rarely aware of their children’s internet activity.
- · While three quarters believe their child spends less than an hour a day online, children admit that they are actually surfing the web for an average of two hours a day.
- · Although two thirds said they had had a negative experience online, only 22 per cent of parents realised this.
We then moved onto designing. We mocked up the Yahoo! home page, keeping it minimal and fresh. We ran with a circular theme, as we thought this would reflect the two 'O's' in the brand name. We also tried to emulate the aesthetic of Bing's search engine, as we discovered through research that these two brands are now merged. We decided to stick with the original logo and took the colour purple and weaved it throughout the design. Bing uses a lot of orange so we aimed to subtly integrate this colour as well.
Throughout our idea development, we kept the young target audience in mind. We tried to make our designs feel approachable and fresh. We injected colour with illustrations and photography in the background behind the search bar, taking direct inspiration from Bing.com.
Examples of how the home page of Yahoo! would look like:
Mock up of web browser homepage:
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