'This is not just a makeover but a whole new online offering'

Young Scot’s mission is to provide the best blend of information and opportunities to give young people the confidence to make informed choices about their lives.

Last month, we launched a brand new digital information platform. It is not just a makeover but a whole new online offering from us. It is already causing a stir, having won its first award at the EYCA conference in June.  

As the national youth information charity in Scotland, we are continuously evolving our approach to digital, technology and social media and based on data and feedback from young people, we believed a new digital information platform would give young people an exceptional social and mobile focused service.

Using insights from what young people search for on Young Scot, we designed a brand new digital service that best fits the needs of young people today. In true Young Scot style, and with our digital partners Storm ID, we went through extensive co-design and user testing sessions with groups of young people from across the country to enhance our understanding of the kind of online services they wanted to see. 

The state of the art platform brings together all of Young Scot’s information, opportunities and services under one roof and gives Young Scot the flexibility and space to create responsive and reactive information campaigns that connect with young people. The platform also curates content from some of Young Scot’s information partners such as Get The Lowdown, Choices for Life and My World of Work.

While the previous Young Scot site was responsive to devices, the new platform has been designed and developed ‘mobile first’, ensuring that the site works seamlessly on all the devices that young people use on daily basis. The platform also embeds content from other prominent social platforms, including Instagram and YouTube.

Locality is a prominent feature of the platform and by using geo-location technologies in devices, young people can set their location and access content that is ‘near’ to them, including things to do, news, and discounts brought together by Young Scot’s local authority partners.

We are hugely excited about our co-designed platform which demonstrates how well an innovative approach design can be implemented in reality. The feedback from young people has been really positive. This is just phase one of what is an ongoing digital development and we are looking forward to continuing to work with young people and our digital partners to keep improving and refining our digital offering.

Louise Macdonald is chief executive of Young Scot. Take a look at the new site at young.scot.