Not another f-ing application!

“Not another f-ing app!”

When ever we discuss apps in my organisation there is an inherent aversion towards them. They require a lot of design, vetting and upkeep.

One is often asked to make a “homepage” instead.

Only, we aren’t allowed homepages (don’t ask me why). Even if we were, they are not what our target audience prefer: those aged 13–25.

If you look at statistics, they are the “app first” generation. They prefer apps over homepages because an app:

• sends notifications
• works offline
• is generally more user friendly

When I make products and services, I not only think of the luxury of usability but I often consider populations that would be excluded. Society’s most vulnerable.

Somewhere out there is a youth that does not have WiFi at home, that does not even have a computer and that sometimes has to skip meals because there is no food at home. The pamphlets they are given from social workers, psychiatry and school with numbers and information about support groups and resources are long gone. Those shrivelled up papers are at one of the 10 temporary government mandated homes or “support parents” their case worker has placed them at because life is not optimal at the moment. They want to look up something, or read words of solace and copy that number to that support line that seemed good, but they can’t look it up.

They forgot to leave the browser window up and cache the information, now it’s just a disparaging message glairing at them from the white mobile screen “No internet connection”.

None of the neighbours are sharing their WiFi.

So they tuck away their phone and wait for the morning to come so that they can use the public WiFi at school.

But a new ruling has come this week, the school has decided to turn it off during school hours, or even worse, phones are locked away.

So they only have 4 minutes to browse after they arrive at school.

10 if they are lucky and can sneak off to the WC with the phone.

And while they do, they forget to cache the page, again. They are distracted by a stream of notifications that appear from TikTok, Snapchat, those clips waiting for them on YouTube.

They loose themselves for a while. They get a moment of normalcy, inclusivity, and of joy.

They’ll look up the number later, perhaps while walking past the library WiFi on the way home, but it’s slow so they give.

This is my target audience. They may not be many, but they are on my mind.