Speaker 1: Are you a designer developing apps, games, websites, or online services? You're now required to design with children in mind. If you are creating online products and services, it's important you know the age of your users. If your work is likely to be accessed by children, you need to use children's code and check more information on the ICO website. This is a cutout from one of the magazines I'm actually reading on totally unrelated field. It's about making and DIY and things of that nature, if you care about my hobbies at all. But ultimately, I found this just by accident. Earlier in the year, I was flipping through a magazine and I was like, oh, this is actually quite interesting and I'm sure a lot of you haven't even heard about it. So let's dive right into it. So it's not a secret that Europe is leading with everything to do with usability, accessibility, data and privacy handling. That has been almost one of those things which we are proud of. But that of course comes with a cost because you need to consider so many different things and this is one of them. Because it's yet another thing to consider. For example, in UK, if you have a business, you need to register with the ICO who published this. You get a certificate and a statement that everything you do publicly, an email, a product, a service, is going to be considered and following the GDPR rules and data privacy handling. And now also be responsible for anything to do with experiences for children. And because more and more children get their phones super early, they are able to access all the different products. So it's our responsibility to make sure that whatever we do is actually usable by them. But we are also informed what's appropriate, what's not appropriate, and so forth. And a lot of services out there have been already using some of this, but it never has been this structured. For example, on YouTube, this video, I have to check that it's not made for children. Even if it's not going to be reduced in terms of the reach, it's not going to be promoted for children. Because ultimately, why would we watch this type of content even if it's appropriate, let's say, or family-friendly. So in the same regard, you are going to need to consider when you craft the specific details. You already do that when you, let's say, craft things for elderly or less accessible or like considering temporary, situational, or permanent user needs in accessibility terms. This is yet another thing you must consider. There is a specific toolkit which we actually published for anyone to use. Make sure to read this on your own time and study because a lot of it is high-level on purpose because product owners or product managers, business stakeholders, partners, we need to consider this to shape their operations and strategy. For us, it's a super tactical application in a way but also touches the UX strategy too. The specific steps are bringing children's view into the design process. If your product or service is public, you must include user testing with children ultimately because they might be using it. Or let's say, if it's not intended to be used by children, you might need to restrict the areas, have age forms and blockers, and have gates keep people from accessing that material which is not even intended for them because they might not benefit from it. So that's also another way. Nielsen Norman Group has a terrific resource of how to do research studies for your products and services with minors or children in mind. How to engage with them, how to research with them, how to basically do it right. Now, next one is to meet children's needs as they change over time. This is very, very important because there are different types of actual children. There are pre-literate, core primary schools, transition years, early teens, and then approaching the adulthood. And they become your lenses and segments to look at your product through it because you need to understand exactly at what phase they are engaging with your product. For example, myself, I would use this to plan my research if I need to engage with them. I would need to, one, maybe target a specific segment, but also maybe research enough of the people who reflect on that segment approach if a product is tailored for that audience and then restrict the rest. Maybe that's a way. And next, find the best moments to engage children with privacy information. You must pick the right time and place to inform them that, hey, this is maybe appropriate for you or maybe I need more information about you to understand if it's appropriate or things of that nature. So you as a designer now need to consider what steps in the flows or in the bigger journeys actually are affected and where are you actually going to add those interaction points. For example, then we track cookies or try to get the confirmation or rejection from the users when we enter a website because we track some sort of, you know, cookie data or behavioral data. That's the same way. Now we're going to need to consider how to appropriately engage with the actual miners if the product is public. Another thing super important to highlight is that we need to consider that there's never just a child. There's usually parent and child dynamic because to date, a lot of parents were putting child blockers or monitoring the usage. You need to consider that your product user is not just a child. They could be the user, but the actual customer could be the parent. Therefore, you need to tailor your applications to both. But consider that dynamic, how we both interlink. Let's say a typical project you might need to now research with a parent and a child. So it kind of like even more inflates that scope of who do you engage with to understand enough or to be safe enough on the legal side or compliance side that you did your due diligence and your product meets the requirements. And lastly, from the guidance, protect children's privacy by default. It basically states that you must give control to your user's children, let's say. And, you know, apps like TikTok or Instagram, which are widely accessed by younger generations in particular, they already have invested in adding a lot of different features to route specific content or restrict specific content. But the most important part and tool to highlight is really how to create those age appropriate mindset or how to map the moments in the journeys needed to highlight those data privacy terms, let's say, or restrict things or shape the functionality for the user. And so you get the Miro template or a PDF template, which you can use immediately. You get a short case study describing exactly how to do this, how to track the mindset. And this is a superb resource because now you can actually start at something and then reflect exactly and do enough research to realize who, like how young is the child who's using your product or service and then track their challenges, their needs, and behaviors. And we give a few different examples. A mindset for zero to five-year-olds. And that's taking if you're going to segment your user base by the year or age. But let's say their challenges could be that their awareness of online risk is very limited, limited self-control, unlikely to be able to read the text, things of that nature because they're zero to five years old. But they could be users of that website you're designing. And the next bit which I want to pull out is from a practical tools is journey mapping or what they call the key moments maps. Because each product is going to have its own flow or maybe each product set or vertical is going to have different flows for different types of users. You need to start again with a mindset and who is it for? How are they going to engage with the product in their natural environment? Meaning you're going to need to do enough UX research to understand the as-is journey of that specific segment in the target group and then add exactly what steps they're taking, what personal data you might be tracking right now, let's say, and you need to improve on. The risky moments, risk notes, things to highlight for the service team or product team. Maybe you're going to map the as-is thing of your existing product and now you need to create version two. So this is going to be a tool for you to then create that delta between as-is and the to-be. You can map both basically. Mapping notes question and ideas of course is that almost like an ideation session with your team to understand exactly based on those risk notes what ideas do we have to improve on that specific touch point or that specific feature. And to better illustrate we created this imaginary case study with cooking numbers mobile app and who is it for. They shown you exactly how they would do it on a high level. Of course your journey mapping and research efforts could look very differently. What matters here is that we are highlighting what you should be capturing in terms of the journey steps. The risky moments or flagging them exactly where it's a bit iffy let's say or what you need to consider a bit more or go back to the drawing board and redraw those features all together. The risky notes and maybe ideas of how to approach it and create this strategy plan for the team to take on and maybe ideate further or solutionize. And so this is the toolkit and of course I'm running through it super quick. Make sure to take a look at it yourself because it's very important not just for businesses to keep accountable for how they treat the data or how they produce user experience to handle that data access and customize it for the users or let's say maybe their parents who's also is involved in the loop. But also you as a UX designer to keep up with the demands of the career and the skill sets you have to have. Especially when every other role is gonna be to design a public product or service. Smash that like button if you like this video. Leave a comment down below what you think about it and on that note I'll see you next time.