youth trends archive at Annoying Design

Archive for the 'youth trends' Category

Apr

MobileYouth Facts 2008

By ross 0 Comments

Categories: youth trends

I’m working on a big post about what an “interactive design strategist” is and why every ad agency and product design firm needs them. Ya know, an “account planner” for the digital age.

‘Til then this was worth checking out — a Slideshare presentation with a bunch of young consumer factoids. Not sure where mobileYouth gets their numbers from, but worth a look.

Mar

Forrester’s Gen Y design principals

By ross 1 Comment

Categories: design, website design and youth trends

Young consumers. Generation Yers. “Those crazy Kids!”

You want to reach them online with a website or a Facebook app? You need a specific design framework that takes into account their very unique needs an desires.

Forrester research guru, Bruce Temkin, and myself outlined four Gen Y design principals: immediacy, Gen Y literacy, individualism, and social interactivity.Recently, BusinessWeek picked up on the need to design specifically for Generation Y. Their writer Matt Vella discussed the Gen Y design of Hulu.com.

Hulu’s super-clean functionality, and great video streaming capabilities, makes it an awesome online media site. But when it comes to winning a youth audience, start-ups like Slide.com and RockYou are king. I recently got to interview the Co-founder of Rock You Jia Shen, but that’s not why I’m saying this.

Sites like RockYou they dont’ just distribute media — they let people interact, share, create, and customize content. Which is what Gen Y uses the Web for.

So, for all those going after those crazy kidzzz… here are the four essential design principals explained in The Gen Y Design Guide that every youth-focused experience needs:

Immediacy: Pull them into the experience quickly and keep them interested
Gen Y Literacy: Communicate authentically on their level
Individualism: Allow them to personalize their experiences
Social Interactivity: Enable them to communicate, and express themselves

Forrester’s Gen Y design principals

Mar

why us kidz love 80s retro

By ross 0 Comments

Categories: advertising and marketing and youth trends

There’s a reason why my 18 year-old kid brother Jake loves watching VH1’s I love the 80s. Even though he was born in 1990. The kitschy, fashion-insane era of the 80s captures his interests much more than the 70s or 90s.

There’s just something about big hair and tight gold pants that makes ya wanna dance.

So how does young consumers’ love for the 80’s reflect in their behavior and attitudes? Youth-friendly brands like American Apparel and Urban Outfitters, whether they’re trying to or not (probably not), pay homage to the 80’s with their product lines and advertising.

Urban Outfitters’ line of home electronics, like USB-connected tape decks and iPod boom boxes, is tears-for-fears terrific. Media is looking back to the Regan era too, with the new Knight Rider.

But so how do “us kidz” — specifically Gen Y — interact with products and media to bring us a taste of the 80s retro pallet we love? Here’s some observations, split into five areas:

CONTENT: Web content = memory recall. You Tube lets us reminisce on songs from Starship, or commercials with George Costanza singing about McDonald’s… even if we weren’t there to see it first, like my kid bro.
ENTERTAINMENT: Movies are our way back. With the drop in cost of DVD duplication a few years ago, obscure 80s films are making new fan followings. Like my favorite
MARKETING: Leslie & the LY’s, the internet celeb with gem sweaters, know whats up.
AESTHETICS: It’s not fun unless it’s fugly (Yea, that stands for fucking-ugly). The rise of the amature MySpace aesthetic, brought on by the democratization of design and style on the Web, ties nicely in the 80s retro… where it often seemed to be the uglier the better.