Unlock Wellbeing
A co-produced website that signposts digital self-help for young people affected by symptoms of depression and anxiety.
We worked in partnership with Bath University and groups of young people aged 13-18 to design, build, test and launch this website.
We involved a diverse group of young people right from the start of this project.
They helped us to design the brand, logo, layout, colours and content of the website.
The Challenge
Can a single self-help digital intervention help young people who are struggling with low mood and worries?
This is the question posed by the Unlock Wellbeing project, based at Bath University. We helped them build a website to help answer it.
The research team shared our belief that the best people to tell us how best to design the website was young people themselves.
Their work on the Can We Connect? study had already shown:
- A disconnect between what young people need and what they find when they look for support online
- The importance of visual appeal and age-appropriateness in engaging with youth audiences
- Young people value credibility and trustworthiness
- Individual differences in how people go about looking for information and support.
So to give the website the best chance of succeeding, we had to involve them right from the start of the project, and we had to be ready to change our plans depending on what they told us!
The Solution
Working closely with our research partners, we helped facilitate a series of workshops with young people.
Our initial focus was on establishing how young people would perceive the product, and how it compared to what was already out there. We moved on to defining the brand, including its name and logo, imagery, and the colour scheme we would use.
By iteratively designing, testing and re-testing with this group, our website gradually emerged. The young people were then able to give us very detailed guidance on how to structure the site, and the words we use to describe symptoms, complex interventions and research topics.
By the end of the project, we had a site which young people engage with readily, gave them just the right amount of information and reassured them that there was support available.
