Let’s make an app for a kid
This is a design challenge during the application of role.
Goal: Design a concept mobile app to teach 14 words to a 7-year- old. 🧒
Overview
I have not tried kids’ apps/games even after becoming an experience designer. I have been busy designing experiences for adults: websites, game & applications.
So I just started doing online research/ secondary research about kid UX/design for kids from different sources.
Findings
7–9 years school age
Children in this age group are in the concrete operational stage. They begin having logical thoughts and can work out things in their minds. Reading comprehension is still developing, but they have an expanded vocabulary and understand more complex sentences and words. Use symbols, icons, and pictures as a primary way to communicate meaning, as children tend to ignore copy.
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes
During this stage, children begin to think logically about concrete events. They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example.Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete. Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle.
Here is the list that I will keep in mind while designing for kids
💜 Storytelling technique works .. example: Cartoonish animation (better in an interactive way instead of just an animation video) feat: narrative, friendly, educational & caring voice 🥳
💜 Pictures ( picture paint a thousand words ) 🖼️ & Background music 🎵 & rewards 🎁
💜 Familiar colors & shapes, Familiar environment, places & things like TV shows, toys, etc😃
💜 Try to limit writing depending on what you want kids to learn & avoid content-heavy interfaces❌
💜 Focus landscape usage as it is easier to hold for kids and better for visual or interactive content. It does not mean portrait is bad!
“we can think like why a TV is always landscape and our natural screen ratio of being wider than taller” ▆
💜Must be safe & appropriate (also good to have parental guide/control) 🤗
💜 Take account of emotions, cognitive abilities, motor skills & vocab limitations 🧒🏽
💜 Kids have a short attention span. They are easily distracted & they are not happy about waiting. They do need visual & auditory feedback! ‼️
💜 Touchscreen designs for kids under 9 should emphasize swiping, tapping, and dragging 📱
💜 Kids are developing fast. Sometimes, apps for 3–5 years old may not be useful for 6–8 years old kids anymore but that depends as there are apps/games for 2–8 years old also … 🧒🧒🏻
Lowfi Designs
Below are the designs I made for 7-year-old kids and hopefully they can learn these random 14 words.
Takeaways:
Current designs can be massively improved with …
“Collaboration with librarians, parents, teachers, other UX designers, colleagues.”
“Creating our own stories, own animations, narratives to explain words/vocabs.”
“Contextual research: Choose an age range , not more than two years between them and note how they interact with each other, what holds their attention and what doesn’t. It would be best to observe groups of girls and boys who know each other at least slightly in their natural context. & other researches.”
“Involve kids during design process.”
Shoutout to Sqkii, blush, lottiefiles and pngtree for illustrations.
Thanks for reading!’
