14 principles for designing products for teenagers

Teens are an exciting group to design products for. However, we need to take into account not only the age and lifestyle of this audience, but also the generational differences that come into play.

Although there’s no silver bullet recipe for winning teenagers over, there are enormous differences between designing edtech, entertainment, social, or productivity apps. Luckily, there’s a set of principles that’ll help you get closer to this target audience.

You might wonder where these principles come from. Well, I’ve had the opportunity to work on three different products targeting teenagers specifically, so I’ll be sharing a mixture of my personal experiences, experiments we ran, and research we did along the way.

One last remark before we dive in — though teenagers are technically between 13 and 19 years of age, I typically think of a teenager as someone between 12 and 16 years old. Anyone older than that is essentially a young adult, and anyone younger still classifies as a kid. Therefore, the 12–16-year-old group is homogeneous enough to put under one umbrella, so this is the demographic I have in mind when sharing these insights.

1. Limit text

Although limiting the amount of copy on the screen might sound like a universal practice, it’s even more critical when designing for teens.

There are two reasons for that. First, they tend to be impatient and want to get through the flow as soon as possible, and copy slows that down. Secondly, they often multitask (like using a phone while talking to friends during lunch or watching a show on TV while scrolling through Instagram).

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This behavior makes it difficult for longer pieces of copy to get through, so keeping it short is important.

2. Simplicity wins

If you are in doubt, remove it.

Simplistic design works best when it comes to teenagers, namely:

• Don’t overuse colors — Teens are not kids, so there is no need to be playful
• Teens judge products based on their experience and friends’ recommendations — In most cases, there’s no need for overusing testimonials and other credibility signals
• They tend to be impatient multitaskers — The faster they can go through the funnel, the better

3. Speed matters

Speaking of impatience and multitasking, speed matters a lot.

While a five-second loading screen might not push people to bounce just yet, they’ll almost certainly get distracted with something else in the meantime. The less attention they pay to your product over time, the higher the chance of churn.

And don’t even think about artificially slowing things down. The labor illusion bias doesn’t resonate well with teenagers.

4. Don’t infantilize

Infantilization is the fastest way to lose an audience.

Remember, they are not kids anymore, and they want to be treated seriously and with respect.

Think of teens more like “inexperienced young adults.”

5. Prioritize mobile-view

That should go without saying.

Each new generation is increasingly mobile-focused, so if you have a web product, design for mobile-view first. How it works on the desktop is secondary.

6. Unlogged experience is key

Registration walls are conversion killers, especially for web products.

Generally, teens don’t like going through the registration process. Once again, they are impatient, tend to multitask (which makes it easy to make errors during registration), and surprisingly, they seem to focus on privacy and anonymity more than older audiences.

The key is to nail your unlogged experience and make them want to register on their own — for example, to unlock extra benefits or features.

Additionally, virality is the most effective acquisition channel (is there a more socially engaged group than teenagers?), making the unlogged experience even more important. I doubt TikTok or Instagram would be so popular if they forced you to register to watch shared content.

7. Let them be anonymous

If you eventually push teens to register, ensure they can be anonymous.

For example, let them create an alias for their public profile so no one can figure out who they are. You could even consider extra features to allow them to write anonymous posts on social platforms or create throwaway accounts (any Redditors here?).

It turns out teens are more privacy-oriented than most adults I know.

8. Focus on easy, private social sharing

How do you deal with the fact that teens value anonymity, but teen-oriented products tend to benefit most from virality-oriented mechanics?

By making private sharing stupidly easy.

While most teens won’t publicly share stuff they like on their Instagram or Facebook feeds, sharing private links to friends is different.

Focus on features like an easy way to copy links or share directly with private communicators. Public sharing is secondary.

9. Keep your product name simple

Simple product names win.

Word-of-mouth is a powerful acquisition channel for teen-oriented products. This segment tends to cross-refer products to each other all the time.

Simple, easy-to-pronounce, and memorable names make this process smoother.

10. There’s nothing better than shorts

If you can use short videos to communicate with teenagers, go for it.

Products like TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, etc. not only train teens how to use shorts but, sadly, also addict them to the quick and easy dopamine hits they provide. Just like binging a whole season on a Netflix series sounds better than a ten-hour movie, watching 20 shorts sounds better than a seven-minute video or, worse, an article.

If you want to pass on some information, go with short videos. They work both as a core mechanic (e.g., using short videos in an edtech product to educate students) and a supplementary one (e.g., using short videos rather than text in in-app messaging).

11. Gamification works like a charm

Teens are sweet spot audiences for gamification mechanics.

They are old enough to understand the implicit value of streaks, points, and rankings while being young enough to actually care a lot.

Snapchat and Duolingo streaks are perfect examples here.

If you can implement some sort of gamification in your product, don’t think twice.

12. Scroll over pagination

Don’t paginate, period.

There isn’t a more natural gesture among teens than the “swipe up” one. When it comes to designing for teenagers, I can’t think of a reason to choose pagination over infinite scrolling.

13. Nail the search experience

Even if you don’t have a lot of content, provide a search experience and ensure it’s great.

There’s hardly a more painful punishment for an impatient, multitasking teen than asking them to search independently through site navigation and subcategories.

Yeah yeah, I might be generalizing a bit, but you get the point.

14. Don’t overuse animations

Another common design misconception is that teens love animations.

They don’t.

Let’s recap a few previous points. Teens are impatient, want to be treated seriously, and are easily distracted.

How are animations helping here? They’re not.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that you should avoid animations altogether, but use them sparingly. And definitely don’t add them just to make the product more “teenage-like!”

Closing thoughts

If there’s one principle I want you to remember, it’s that teens are very young adults, not children.

You don’t win them over with playfulness and fancy animations. Instead, you win them over with a simple product that helps them get the job done fast and anonymously, and provides them with the dopamine they need.

The most significant factors you design for are:

• Anonymity
• Impatience
• Distractions
• Quick dopamine hits

Take care of these four, and you’ll have quite a promising product for our younger peers.