My best life
Do you use Google and online directories to get help, to find fun things to do? Have you ever found difficult to know where to start? Do you usually end up with exploring multiple websites and feeling lost by which is right for you?
If you nodded to all this questions, you need My Best Life in your life.
After years of research, one of our most pressing challenges is how we help young people find the right services and opportunities for them, based on what makes them tick. It is easier for young people to find the best takeaway or trend than it is to find support when they need it.
Our vision
Our vision is for a world where young people thrive because they know about and can access the right services and opportunities for them, whether that is meeting specific needs for support, allowing them to pursue their passions or helping them progress their careers. We believe that accessing this information should be as easy as getting information on commercial services.
Our solution
This work seeks to reduce such barriers by improving the information available about such services to both charities and young people. We believe this will allow young people to better able to find support whenever they need it. This is possible through better use of collaboration and technology, that is scalable, efficient, and focused on young people and their needs.
We have now launched our progressive web app!
Explore the opportunities and get involved in your local community now!
Our insights and learning
We have produced this guide hoping that the insights we have gained from working with young people can benefit others. As a charity not a commercial organisation, we want to share what we have learned. If you would like our open-source code, you are welcome to use it. If we can help you add value to your own digital products through sharing what we have learned about what young people want from digital products, we are keen to do so. The insights from the young people who have steered our process can benefit anyone developing products or services for young people.
Build the right experience
First impressions count. The same applies for making digital products. Explore what appeals to young people.
Share clear and simple information
When looking for support, people are assessing if a service is right for me. We share the key questions and information to help young people access support.
Build trust throughout your digital products
Having good information is one thing, but trust in your site will make or break engagement. Explore the key features that make and break trust for young people.
Maintain the users privacy needs
Different audiences have different privacy concerns. We explore the implications for your digital products.
Our process
We have used a human-centred design approach and focused on testing throughout. We are working in partnership with young people and organisations from across the UK.
The project began with an initial discovery phase. What was important to young people? What was missing in what was out there? What did they want to help them? What did they want the app to look and feel like? Through user personas, focus groups, 1-2-1 interviews, and input throughout from our steering group of young people, we tested and developed a proof-of-concept progressive web app.
This work is designed to test the hypothesis that a progressive web app can help young people discover services and opportunities in their local area. We are continuing to test which aspects of the web app are most important for improving knowledge of and access to services.
Over twelve months, we worked with a group of young people experiencing multiple disadvantages in the London Borough of Camden. We sought to understand their experiences—as told in their own words—and identify how digital technology could help.
This phase was all about responding to the need for better support for young people we found in phase one. But we also want to go further, by triggering a shift in how the social sector approaches challenges like this.
Working alongside, young people, charities and Lambeth Council we developed a proof of concept in the form of a progressive web app that helps young people to discover services and opportunities in the local area. We wanted to test whether a user-led progressive web app could better connect young people to services.
We have launched our progressive web app, and now shares data with Lambeth’s Family information Service, so young people can find support and opportunities near them. Visit mybestlife.app. The current phase focuses on exploring where the most value can be found with the app and where we can take it now.
Explore our latest work
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Our latest thinking
Our data entry
Explore our data entry so far
My Best Life web app
My Best Life
In partnership with
Get involved
My Best Life has been created by a partnership of organisations in collaboration with young people from across the UK. We are working in the open and would love to speaking to anyone who is trying to do similar work. Please get in touch with the team via the form below.
