Voice, a charity that provides advocacy to young people and children in care commissioned us to design and develop their new website, with a focus on engagement with young people.
The Challenge: To design and develop an engaging new website, which clearly provides information and support for young people, children and professionals working in care. Awards for All provided the funding for the project so a crucial part of the project was engaging in active participation workshops with young people to develop and consolidate their skills. The Alliance for Child-Centred Care also had to be integrated in the new website.
The Solution: We created a steering group of three young people who are actively involved with Voice to help lead the engagement elements of the projects. We developed the brief with them and then arranged two web design workshops with young people and children from Voice, in London and Swindon. Using the information we gathered during these sessions, we developed the website to make accessible to its key user group.
One of the man features of the site is the separation between young users, professionals and the alliance, which was implemented using ‘zones’. Functionality features include a login area, changeable backgrounds, a comments wall and recipe section.
We wanted the launch of the website to be in keeping with the ethos of the project and were delighted when Robert Sheehan, BAFTA nominated for his role in E4’s Misfits, agreed to stop by the studio to meet the young people and launch the site.