Anyone working with designing and building websites and applications knows how important feedback is. An application without feedback is vague, mysterious and sad. When you design for children you have to pay special attention to the right feedback and internal reward. Kids aren’t small adults; they believe and trust even interfaces they see. One of my saddest experiences as a parent was the day when Tamar ran to me enthusiastically from her computer to tell me there’s a chance to win a quarter of a million dollars because she’s the 1000^th surfer on some despicable game site. At that moment I was overwhelmed with sadness and fear – it’s hard to describe the feeling, the trust she had in what she saw on the computer broke my heart.

Even so, kids are much smarter then we tend to think and they know much more than most of us would expect.

They have small hands that need to be taken into account, and other insights about the world, they don’t have the same conception we do about the internet, its content, and the scope of information it contains. In this sense, planning an interface for children is a most wondrous adventure, and it takes you to new and fascinating places in both the product sense and the psychological sense. The introduction to iPhones only doubled the size of the problem and expanded its characterization.

Just as in education, consistency brings the best results in applications as well. When we teach a child to expect something and then we rattle the ground beneath his feet, the results can be devastating, and since we’re talking about common and very impatient users, inconsistency can lead to fast tempers and an uncontrollable will to throw the device and that’s bad for both the parent and the application.

Whatever doesn’t happen – didn’t happen

Sometimes kids are very much like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (“… it assumes that if someone cannot see it, it cannot see them …” – from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) if they don’t see what’s happening, they assume it never happened. Therefore, when you are about to design something for children, be sure to leave distinct signs that something happened, that the system noticed an action – did you send something to someone? Did you move something from place to place? Did you click something? Something different has to happen.

 Example – nickjr: hovering with the mouse on every character makes it pop up and do something identifiable with it, this creates a reactionary feeling and non-stop action – generally this site is one of the best in my opinion, as far as the interface design is concerned.

A mall will be built here

In the lifecycle of every big web project, there’s a stage in which everyone sits, bleary-eyed, regarding the features and express whatever comes to mind. “Here”, says the product manager, “here will be a banner with five air directions, fountains, and touching illustrations”, everyone nods enthusiastically. Careful! You have reached the “A mall will be built here” stage.

In the beginning it’s an exciting stage, everyone fantasizes differently about how the mall will look. One has a McDonalds and marble fountains, the second has fashion stores, and the third has goods shops. Everyone has a predisposed expectation on what’s going to be there. The problem is that everyone has a different idea, different opinions and different fantasies.

Kids don’t know malls. If you leave grey areas (in both the physical and theoretical sense) in applications, as far as they’re concerned, they don’t exist. Don’t let them err in their path and reach places no other man has been before. The child needs to understand where he is and where he’s going throughout his use of the application.

If you try to tell them that “here is something else”, they will immediately demand to know what that something is, they aren’t strong with time or imagining what you want them to imagine.

In times of embarrassment – stress!

Kids, like certain adults (um… guilty as charged), tend to assume that whatever doesn’t work by force will work with more force and whatever doesn’t work with one click will work with four hundred clicks. If something doesn’t happen the second they expect it to, they assume it doesn’t work and their logic implies that if they press the mouse or keyboard button again and again and again, the reluctant application will run and something magical will happen. Since applications aren’t built to such absurd use scenarios, they will react like most programs and will likely most luxuriously collapse. Therefore you need to solve the problem before it even comes up and give immediate feedback (even if nothing will happen anytime soon).

Keep the clicks from being devastating – no action that a child does needs to bring upon the collapse of the application/logout/change of operation mode/deletion without feedback and more. The less you allow your child to destroy, the more you’ll be able to keep the application alive and well.

Talking Tom hears a who – fast response with every click, every speech, every touch

Break Routine

There is no chance your child will be ready to accept an unimaginative and boring routine, and between us, in your applications you have to take the same approach. There are millions of applications for children, the best of which are frequently updated and upgraded (e.g. Talking Tom). Take care to show the child all the changes that have occurred, invite him (via the opening page, or banners in the applications, or best of all – through a content game) to see the new and exciting things he can do. But please – don’t be assholes and try to squeeze money out of him, any application that once downloaded offer the child millions of things for money and use the previous appendix (when embarrassed – stress!) to make the child download fruit for the mice for one hundred dollars – shame on you! (I just heard about a kid who bought things at “tap zoo” worth $100)

And again, Talking Tom shows us how worthwhile it is to download more friends, and it works.

Behind every child is a parent

When it comes down to it – behind every child is a parent and the design needs to be aimed at him as well. The hints to what the parent likes, plays or uses himself will give you extra points. On the other hand – use that “requires” a parent to be present and active will drive the average parent crazy very fast and will make him secretly erase the application from the device or at least make sure the child never reaches it again. I always like to try and wink at the parent by creating an interface that will awaken nostalgic feelings. I want the parent to thing: “when I was a kid, I had fun and this and that… and I want my own child to experience similar things”. I want to awaken this feeling in the parent without them realizing that I’m doing it.

From bitter experience – make it fun for the parents too. Don’t force them to use it, applications for children are babysitters in smooth disguises, don’t forget that.

In the picture – nostalgia

Mom, look

Despite what is said in the previous appendix, it is important that your application will be something that will make the child run to their parent all the time so that can “see” what the child built, the prize he won, sharing option, a picture he took where he looks more amazing than usual, a picture he took and added things too, a painting, and more. Anything that makes the child run to their parent for positive reinforcement every several minutes is positive for your application as well.

In the picture – Tamar is sending me a Vikido message

Accessibility

Kids approach devices different and at different times than adults, mostly they’ll have limited access to devices of all kinds. That is why there should be a fast and satisfying enough way for them to be able to approach it again when they can. When designing the application, take into account the context of their action: where and when will the child be near the application? Vacations, kindergarten, schools, and more – we need to take everything into account because the world we all live in does not match the world of the average child. He does not have available internet, a device of his own, outgoing calls to his friends on programs and devices and more (though the amount of mobile phones kids have today is changing, buy it’s still something to take into account).

All the rest

Oy vay, I haven’t even talked about the most important issue of all, for example the connection between the parent and child, online safety, the need to explain things carefully to the parent, combining the application with school and daily life, and the big game question (even Google ads a gaming edge to their gray services…) and more and more and more. These past years I’m working a lot on products that are for kids of all ages – and I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg.