Little brains on Virtual World
Development in technology has an effect on the growth and lifestyle of children of this generation. Children started interacting with devices as much as they interact with people. Research with users aged 3–12 shows that children have gained substantial proficiency in using websites and apps. The designs for children in most of the cases mean the use of colour palettes having a wide range of colours. Devices and applications children interact with also follows the same pattern to attract attention. But Designing for children is not that simple. That should be done taking into account the developmental characteristics of the different age groups of children and requires a distinct usability approach. Since the time and effort children put into interfaces have increased, their design also has gained importance. Even the education system is also utilizing virtual platforms and their relevance increased these days due to the pandemic. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development describes that the child learns the world exclusively through the creation and acquisition of individual experience, respectively, our task is to provide the children with such UX, where they can be the author of their story, but not the listener who passively perceives what the screen tells them.
4-year-old Ally feeds her barbie doll, 7-year-old Jiss treats the teddy bear as his best buddy. They respond to the anime characters on television screens. Children imagine their toys, gadgets, and anything relatable to them as their friends. They get very attached to all things they like to interact with. When they moved to digital platforms, they behaved the same. Many websites and apps specifically target children with educational or entertainment content, and mainstream organizations often have specific “kids’ corner” sections. The number of time children spend on computers and mobile devices has increased substantially [1]. But in most cases, designed for children ends up having a wide range of colours in their palette. Such a stereotype has been created where all interfaces with children as an audience fill them with a variety of bright colours and images of cartoon characters. Design myths have to be separated from usability facts in the case of Designs for children and it requires an understanding of the cognitive development of children.
Children can’t be grouped in a wide range based on their age as we do for adults. Studies proved that at growing stages children show different sets of abilities at each age. So it’s difficult to consider an age group having children with more than four years of the age difference. The devices and interfaces designed for children should have a decision on the age group they are targeting and their brain development stages should be taken into account. Jean Piaget is a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development deals with the development of human intelligence and based on cognitive abilities, he categorized it into four different cognitive development stages- the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational period[2]. Considering the age groups starting from age 3 and the set of their cognitive abilities the aspects of design change. Every device should interact with children of age group 3–5 years like their parents. The motor skills are not developed enough for those age groups. So everything should be exaggerated. Large visuals, more colours, audio feedback, etc are needed for the interactions. The age 6–8 years is the age at which children start reading. So they attained the basic skill to interact with an interface, but in a limited way. They can’t understand call-to-action buttons such as login, submit, share, or terms like password, username, etc. So instead the interfaces should also act like a child and use children’s language for such actions as, let’s play, join my team, show your friends, secret code, name, etc. Also, the words and sentences used for communications should be simple and short. The age group of 9–12 years is good at interactions with interfaces. They can easily figure out the actions like scrolling, navigating, etc.[3]. Children above 12 years are capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning.
Kids learn from what they see around them. They experience the world through actions, representing things with words, thinking logically, and using reasoning. But the patience they show on certain things will be limited. Knowledge and skill developing platforms aiming at young users need to provide emotional support, language support, memory and cognitive support, interaction support, and support to judge document relevance. Though kids are tech-savvier than the ones 8 years ago, each age group needs focused designs. The colours, gestures, interactions, navigations, fonts, visual styling, animations, and sound effects, the shift from established interface rules are to be taken care of. The UX design for young age groups is not that simple and to be responsibly done.
References
[1] Children’s UX: Usability Issues in Designing for Young People;
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/childrens-websites-usability-issues/ dated 13 January 2019
[2] Piaget’s theory of cognitive development from wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development
[3] Children-first design: why UX for kids is a responsible matter
https://uxdesign.cc/ux-for-kids-responsible-matter-802bd12fe28c dated 7 June 2018
[4] Tatiana GossenMarcus NitscheAndreas NürnbergerAndreas Nürnberger, Search User
Interface Design for Children: Challenges and Solutions, European Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information RetrievalAt: Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 2012