Designing Experiences For Young Consumers

From Bruce Temkin and Ross Popoff-Walker's "Designing for Young Consumers," here's their Top 10 list to keep in mind in designing experiences (or radio stations) for Gen Y, those adults ages 18-27. These young consumers:

1. Are continually connected - Text messaging, IM and social networking sites are key communications tactics for these tech-saavy consumers.
2. Speak their own language - They use abbreviations, emoticons, and slang.
3. Are skeptical of authority
4. Are influenced by peers - The rely on recommendations from friends and family when making purchases, and are peer reliant overall.
5. Seek recognition and fame
6. Enjoy absurdity and odd humor
7. Embrace a variety of subcultures
8. Skim text and information quickly - These young eyes process information 5x faster than adults, according to Resource Interactive.
9. Easily bored

10. Expressive and digitally creative - Whateverlife.com, created by a 17-year-old CEO, features the tools that allow people to personalize their MySpace page. Double trouble for this point; a young CEO features products for what is usually a younger demographic.