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Identify your Audience The first step of any web site project is to identify your population of interest. In our case, we wanted to reach a broad cross section of youth in Huron County between the ages of 14 to 24 years. |
Identify your audience (population of interest). |
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Why involve your population in planning? It is important for adults in who work with young people’s organizations to understand youths’ needs, as youth define them (Hart et al., 1997). We directly involved our core youth who were hired for the project in the needs assessment stage of the project. Peer leading gives young people a sense of control that can be empowering and promote a feeling of usefulness (Turner, 1999; Caron, Godin, Otis, & Lambert, 2004). In addition, peer led initiatives provide youth with opportunities to act as potential change agents, rather than the targets of prevention efforts (Berkley-Patton, Fawcett, Paine-Andrews, & Johns, 1997). Active engagement supports the notion in health promotion where individuals work with professionals to define and work out strategies for change (Svenson, 1998; Caron et al., 2004). Regardless of the population of interest that you are working with, it is always valuable to involve your population in the design of your health promotion web site. To help ensure that the technology is user friendly and relevant for your audience, using a participatory design approach will help. It will ensure that you collaborate WITH your population rather than design the site FOR your population (Darin Ellis & Kunrlawan, 2000). |
Involve the population of interest in planning. There are many benefits to running peer-led initiatives.
Design WITH your population not FOR your population. |
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Use Existing Data About your Population Use data about your population of interest that you may have already collected from other work. For example, we used results from focus groups conducted with youth in Huron County which provided useful information about youth’s health concerns that should be taken into account. Although this is helpful in determining content for a health promotion web site, it is not sufficient to determine design specifications for your site. The next section will provide some activities to help you. |
Leverage what you already know about your audience. |
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