Designed for Good: Community Well-Being Oriented Online Databases for Youth - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 298

l The discussion forum is restricted to members only, which provides some level
of governance

It is equally difficult to gain access to community data being created by con-
tributing youth.

l

12.5 Problems and Issues of Youth Well-being in YCD's

The following is a discussion of problems and issues in reference to the two existing
youth well-being web spaces mentioned above. The problems are discussed along-
side the issues that relate to the various problems. A more detailed explanation of
these issues is presented in this section, followed by a discussion of requirements
arising from these issues.

l Relevance: This issue relates to the relevance of issues presented in web spaces.
As noted above, youth are searching for information relevant to what is impor-
tant in their lives at the present time. Often, these concerns are different when
considered from the perspective of many adult designers of youth web spaces.
l Presentation: The presentation of information, features and content of a web
space needs to be in a youth-friendly format. As Livingstone et al. [ 55 ] note,
youth are fickle web users, who need to be actively engaged in web spaces as
opposed to just sitting and reading, thereby making presentation a key issue to be
considered in the design of an effective youth web space.
l Personalisation and Customisation: Moreover, as Ha and Chan-Olmsted (2001)
note, personalisation and customization of web spaces are vital to captivating
audiences, especially youth audiences. Personalisation involves filtering the
types of information being viewed by the user, whereas customization involves
changing the appearance (e.g., background and font colours) of the web space.
l Interactivity: Interacting with the web space with the ability to change or filter in
some way the information being received by the user is an important tool that
any web space should take advantage of; in the case of designing a youth web
space, this becomes even more important. As Ha and James [ 33 ] note, interac-
tivity of web spaces for Youth adds a fun and playful element that youth are
searching for on the Internet.
l Reach and Range: These two issues refer to the potential reach that youth are
able to have with not only their peers but also legislators and decision makers.
The range of available tools enabling interaction with these two groups allows
youth to acquire and contribute information in a meaningful manner.
l Ubiquity: Young people tend to continue many different threads of conversa-
tion within many different contexts within the Internet. They may start an
email conversation, which may lead to including other friends on Facebook,
Twitter and other social networking technologies, all whilst referring to static
informational content on another web space. Ubiquity refers to the ability of
community-built databases within web spaces to liaise with each other to
provide better integration of data.