_posts/2015-09-03-every-kid-in-a-park.md
---
title: "How to design a government site for kids"
date: 2015-09-03
layout: post
authors:
- emileigh
tags:
- agency work
- how we work
- user-centered design
- every kid in a park
excerpt: "Every Kid in a Park gives U.S. fourth graders free access to all federal
lands and water for a full year. Here at 18F, we were proud to develop the site in partnership with the U.S. Department of Interior and other federal land management agencies."
description: "Every Kid in a Park gives U.S. fourth graders free access to all federal
lands and water for a full year. Here at 18F, we were proud to develop the site in partnership with the U.S. Department of Interior and other federal land management agencies."
image: /assets/blog/every-kid-in-a-park/every-kid-in-a-park.jpg
hero: false
---
[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/usinterior/20900647896/in/album-72157657833038461/)
*Students from Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School receive an Every Kid
in a Park pass. Photo credit: Department of Interior.*
At first glance, the phrases “government website” and “for kids,” might
not seem to go hand in hand.
But the launch of Every Kid in a Park highlights how user research can
bring beautiful, useful design to federal websites — including those
aimed at children.
Every Kid in a Park gives U.S. fourth graders free access to all federal
lands and water — including national parks, forests, wildlife refuges,
and marine sanctuaries — for a full year. And they can bring their
families and friends with them for free, too.
“I can't wait for my future fourth grader to take advantage of the Every
Kid in a Park program,” said Denise Turner Roth, the head of the General
Services Administration (GSA). “As both a parent and the Administrator
of GSA, I'm thrilled that we were able to use some of the innovative
skills we have at 18F to develop this kid-friendly website for the
Department of Interior."
[everykidinapark.gov](https://everykidinapark.gov)
is the landing page for that program. It includes a comprehensive list
of where kids can go, explains how the program works, and shows how to
print a pass. Best of all, it was designed, developed, and written for
10-year-olds.
Here at 18F, we were proud to develop the site in partnership with the
U.S. Department of Interior and other federal land management agencies.
“I'm so proud to be part of this initiative that gets children out from
in front of their screens indoors to great, wild, and exciting
outdoors,” 18F Developer Shashank Khandelwal said. Khandelwal served as
the website’s product manager.
This sentiment was echoed across team members. Christine Cheung, the
site’s lead developer said it was a joy to work on such a passionate
team.
“As a fan and ardent visitor of national parks myself, I've been so
happy to be involved in a project that is focused on getting the next
generation out there exploring,” Cheung said.
From the outset, our team knew the Interior Department made for an
exciting, forward-thinking partner. Before we got involved, they hosted
a design studio, a mini-hackathon, and three rounds of user testing with
the University of Maryland’s Kids Team.
They had already honed in on one product — a paper pass — that worked
for both kids and the national sites they’d be visiting. In short, our
partners were well on the way to an excellent product when we had the
opportunity to join.
A small group of 18F team members — including one Presidential
Innovation Fellow — were thrilled to jump in, and together we began our
work with user-centered design and plain language. We made pages, tested
them with users, and adjusted our views accordingly.
That testing “reminded us of the creativity that can come from young
minds,” [Presidential Innovation Fellow Chris
Goranson](https://presidentialinnovationfellows.gov/fellows) said.
The resulting website was carefully crafted, from the colors and the
photos, to the text on every page. Even the information for parents and
teachers was designed to be understandable for our primary users
— fourth graders.
*Sally Jewell, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, sits with kids as they help co-design the Every Kid in a Park website using methods developed by the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction KidsTeam Lab. Photo Credit: Evan Golub, 2015.*
## Building a site for kids has unique challenges
“I love to design websites for kids, especially when those sites coax
them right back offline again and encourage them to explore,” said Eric
Ronne, the site’s lead visual designer. “That helped make this project
especially meaningful for me.”
The website’s visual design relies on bright colors, friendly icons, and
plentiful pictures. In its first iteration, we featured bucolic
landscapes and a nightscape. But kids found the dark photo scary, and
they wanted to see more pictures of people playing and swimming. We
found more daytime photos and photos with kids in hammocks and families
exploring.
## What to do when your audience doesn’t know the word “federal”
We also trimmed content as much as possible. Our first draft was sparse
by government standards, but students still disliked the paragraphs they
encountered. So we scaled back the text.
Word choice was a challenge, too. We originally called “passes”
“vouchers,” but most of our users didn’t have that word in their
vocabulary. They also didn’t know what “federal” meant. So we eliminated
it wherever we could — no easy feat on a federal website.
Our goal was to write the whole site — including the parents and
educators pages — at a fourth-grade level. That goal was backed by data
that showed fourth graders immediately wanted to click on the
“grown-ups” pages, to see what they contained.
By launch, we’d combed through every sentence, eliminating as many
complex words and phrases as possible. We even re-wrote the legal,
privacy policy to read within a fourth-grade level. One of our last
obstacles was the social media tags.
We wanted to feature \#EveryKidInAPark prominently — so people knew how
to share their stories. We built out a standard footer that included the
official hashtag and icons for Twitter ([@everykidinapark](https://twitter.com/everykidinapark)),
[Instagram](https://instagram.com/everykidinapark/), and [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Every-Kid-in-a-Park/1433456993647993?sk=timeline).
But when we tested it with fourth graders? They’re too young to be on
Facebook, which bans users under 13. Many of the kids said they had
house rules against Instagram accounts. None of them used Twitter.
A site designed for 10-year-olds shouldn’t recommend social media they
can’t visit or don’t use. So those icons — ubiquitous in so much web
design — had to go.
## The result
A huge amount of credit goes to our partners at the Interior Department.
We couldn’t have envisioned and enacted this site without their support.
What launched on September 1 is the first version of the site. We’re
constantly working to make updates and improvements. [Check it
out](https://everykidinapark.gov) for yourself! We’d love your feedback. [Drop
us a line](mailto:18f@gsa.gov) or issue a [pull
request](https://github.com/18F/ekip-api) if you have suggestions or
questions!