Improve children’s online privacy and safety messaging to adapt to changes in UK regulatory guidance

A major online gaming company asked us to compare and evaluate prototypes designed to display privacy and safety guidance when gaming online. Our priority was to find the advantages and disadvantages of each prototype to ensure that the guidance was effective.

Challenge

Due to recent changes to the UK’s regulatory guidance on child safety online, the online gaming company needed to adapt its messaging to ensure that children of all reading ages could easily understand and retain information about how to stay safe online. This meant that terminology, presentation, and usability had to be scrutinized to ensure that universal resonance was achieved.

Approach

Our research approach involved 75-minute in-depth interviewS with children of all reading ages, where we let them navigate various prototypes that displayed privacy and safety messages in different designs. For each design, we measured the amount of time spent on the messages, how much of the message they understood and retained, and their design preferences.

Outcome

Participant feedback showed that simpler terminology was needed, along with more concise, clearer messages that discouraged participants from skipping. We weighed the pros and cons of each design to highlight design elements that were most effective for the users. We transformed these findings into an in-depth report and presented it to the client with potential steps forward.

Industry:

Consumer technology

Method/Process:

Design, Exploratory / Foundational

Stimuli:

Gaming