For Bigga Fish and BANG Radio we set up and managed a youth study in London with an experimental approach. We first trained and coached a panel of 5 young researchers in conducting interviews with inner city urban creatives, and then facilitated them in drawing out the main insights and conclusions. Both the researchers and the interviewees were aged between 17 to 25. They talked in-depth about their creative activities, the ways they share their creations with others, the ways they promote their work, and the ways they stay on top of what other people are doing. The energy and drive of these amazing young creatives is fantastic. They are very switched on and use various online social networking tools in combination with their face to face networking at events to create a buzz around their work and get ahead in the field. The aim of the study was to identify the most important needs for online support services to be offered by Bigga Fish and BANG.
Bigga Fish is a non-profit youth organisation dedicated at educating inner city youth through music and other creative activities. They aim to focus the energy of urban youth, by offering them knowledge and opportunities to achieve their goals. “‘Our mission is to provide opportunities to young people to fulfill their potential through the medium of their creativity and the creative industries.’”
BANG is also a non-profit organisation, dedicated to providing creative and media training for young people in London. Its aim is to provide an outlet for young people to enjoy themselves, increase their skills and improve their employment prospects. The radio station BANG Radio is one of the leading black and urban music radio stations in the UK.
Bigga Fish and BANG are working together closely on various projects. When they approached STBY for user research to inform the development of a new online platform to support young urban creatives, we suggested to set up an approach that would result in some useful work experience for a selection of young people in their target group. We trained a panel of 5 young researchers in conducting interviews, we coached them while they were out and about speaking to young urban creatives, we showed them how to effectively document the research materials through a blog and a series of templates, and we moderated a joint analysis workshop that drew out the main insights from the study. Throughout this process people from Bigga Fish and BANG were involved as well, in order to experience how user research contributes to the development of strategic thinking and creative concept development for future online services.
