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How Kids Use the Web
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox usability column details how kids use the web. Even if you don't design sites for kids, some of the results are very interesting. As you might expect, kids like sound and animation more than adults. They're also much more likely to click on ads ... but mostly because they don't realize that's what they are. And although there are some differences, the testing shows kids really aren't that different than adults, preferring consistent, simple and clear interaction. (And they hate slow load times, too!)"
Bob the Analyst says:
"duh."
Even though participants in our study were very young, they often had the greatest success using websites intended for adults. Sites such as Amazon and Yahoo! are committed to utter simplicity and compliance with Web design conventions, and have become so easy to use that they support little kids very well. In contrast, many of the children's sites had complex and convoluted interaction designs that stumped our test users. As one first-grade boy said, "The Internet is a lot of times BORING because you can't find anything when you go on to it."
Maybe it's time that we give kids full access, and create dumbed down portals to adults.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
I was under the impression that all kids spend 99% of their online time in chat rooms talking to 40-year old cops about sex! Did the TV lie to me? ;-)
I thought it was interesting that children are more apt to read and follow instructions.
I guess they are used to that from the school environment.
The report was odd in that they highlight what seem to be significant differences and then go on to say - but those differences really don't matter.
They do it a few times.
Is that to keep readers from getting overly anxious about who they want to target?
Just seemed funny to me.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Im a kid, and im reading slashdot Yes, I hate slow load times but havent clicked on an ad for like... actually, I dont think ive ever clicked on an add I dont mind media, as long as it contains some sort of content -- the retarded useless flash displays arent quite me bag .... but does anyone care
Well, I don't think that kids are more gullible when it comes to adds, i think that they are more compulsive when it comes to obtaining property, toys. They know its an add, but they decide they want it, and aren't bothered with the fact that its just an add.
Disney et al, already know this, why do you think that advertisements for toys are so prevalent in society. heck the toys are their own adds!
Adults plan and compare items before purchase(well usually) while kids are more impressed by pure visual and cultural stimulus.
Teamwork is a bunch of people doing what I tell them.
I probably would've clicked on a banner that said "BREAK DOWN WALLS WITH YOUR PENIS!". Now I know better, but back then I probably would've thought to myself "oh.. so THAT'S what it's for!"
...I'll have to agree. My son loves to play on Caillou's page. Specifically the Find Gilbert page.
The problem? On IE, there are sounds that play ("Caillou's talking to me, Daddy!"), but here on Konqueror, it doesn't play the sounds. So, bringing this back on topic, it's the sounds and flashy type stuff, that I personally find VERY annoying at times, that he loves.
Kids dig that stuff. Unfortunatly, if some add pulls it off right, he'd be clicking...
(P.S. He's not even 3 yet, so it's not much of an issue right now, but you see my point)
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
actually designing sites for kids is incredibly similar to designing sites for the elderly. the format is the same; lots of graphics, simple directions, and easy to navigate. the only real difference is that instead of cartoon charecters you use pictures of Rush Limbaugh
--rock me like a huricane? NO rock you
I thought all they did was look at p0rn!?
Nice to see people recognizing that kids are doing stuff besides pr0n and 'haxx0ring with winnuke'. They are doing other stuff aren't they?
Can all fish swim?
I first went online when I was 12 years old and I very quickly learned to steer clear of sites explicitly for kids. They were almost always nothing but some (usually poorly designed) graphics, some animated gifs, and a few sentences of actual content per page. Maybe I was just weird, but I wanted to get strait at the content, not look at dumb animated gifs.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Even if they can be educated to distinguish advertising from content, there are many flashy (and annoying) advertisements that most of us ignore promising rewards like:
"If this banner is flashing, You've won $50!"
"You have new mail."
etc. A completely seperate issue to advertising vs. content is false/misleading advertising. People (hopefully) evenutally learn to distinguish this, however much of this catches adults off guard as well.
Garth/Darkstar
I read the title and expected to see "Posted by JonJatz"
but 1 run sup3r l33t lUn|X b0x w|th m0zi||4 In5ta||ed, s0 y0uR p4g3 w|den|ng 1s NOT w3rK|n!
Oh my god, I can't stop laughing.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
From the article:
So the answer, then, for more succesful advertising is even further blurring of content and advertisement.Aww, for fucks sake.
I quit. You win, Mr. Nielsen.
Sign me up to have the word Sony lased into my retina. Can I please check the weather without monkeys talking to me and cartoon cars driving across the page now?
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
PR0N!!!!!!! I'm 15 (technicall still a kid?) and theres nothin better than a good gallery of mature ladies hehe. ah, happy days.
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
The suits start scribbling madly: testing shows kids hate slow load times
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Oh so the same guy that has patents on "Processing HTML to embed sound in a web page", "Tooltips on webpages", and "Method and apparatus for archiving hypertext documents" now informs us that kids like colors and animation.
...
Nielson also has such brilliant lightbulbs such as "Links that go directly to a site's interior pages enhance usability because, unlike generic links, they specifically relate to users' goals. Websites should encourage deep linking and follow three guidelines to support its users. "
Thank god we have a man like Nielsen to tell us these things
That's a real big sample space they've got there. I mean, they talk about how web designers sometimes observe how their own kids use the web and how that is not really representative of how the average american kid will do the same.
But they claim to have accurate results when they've tested 55 kids to represent how tens of millions of kids globally will use the web? This is balderdash, I say! They did not take enough samples. They should go test several THOUSAND children and them come back with results.
I mean, would you trust a study that calims to provide the innermost secrets of online behaviour of the average american adult when they have observed only 55 people in the whole country? I doubt it.
you should stay away from slashdot... if that pedophile JonKatz find out where you live, you'll be in deep shit.
Sites for kids. That's about as vague as "sites for adults" (as opposed to "adult sites," of course).
There are several problems with categorizing the design of kids' sites too generically, though I do believe they did a reasonable attempt judging from the summary.
It's important to note that these were elementary school children. A first grader at 6 years old will still be learning how to sit still in his seat, while a fifth grader will begin thinking about his first date. They only studied 55 children, which is not a huge amount.
The only thing we know about those 55 kids is that 2/3 were in the US and 1/3 were in Israel (how about Finland? Brazil? Korea? Why Israel?) Kids in lower socioeconomic strata often can't even read basic words until third grade.
Were the kids told to look for information? Were they asked how "fun" the sites were? Why were they on line in the first place? Doing any design study without clearly identifying motivations basically produces useless results. For information, I recall several years ago being fairly impressed with Encarta's UI, and many of the early electronic "books" on CD-ROM (back in 1993-4, before Microsoft co-opted the term). And for entertainment, I have observed little kids really enjoying the "minesweeping" style of interface.
Can sweeping conclusions be drawn from such a study? Probably. But designers should be very wary if anyone ever asks them to make a product for any age group without a hell of a lot deeper segmentation as well.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
On reading over properly this I get really pissed off. I don't consider myself a 'kid' now.
... but mostly because they don't realize that's what they are.'
'They're also much more likely to click on ads
What a heap of fucking shit. I've known about ads on the internet since I was about 10 when I had
my (god bless it) Mitsubishi Apricot.
bah this just annoys me it labels kids as (I'm paraphrasing here) 'twats who like flashy lights colours sound and can't be fucked waiting for it' Bitches.
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
Boys were significantly more annoyed by verbose pages than were girls (40% of the boys complained, compared to 8% of the girls), possibly because at the ages we tested, boys are not as accomplished at reading as girls.
If I had Jakob Nielsen (most likely shouting "Micropayments are the answer! Micropayments are the answer!") hovering over me as I tried to navigate the web, I'd complain too!
As for as slashdot goes, I'd probably go here. What a cute penguin!
once guys get mature they start searching the web for _immature_ chicks.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Ya, I've been downloading porn since I was 9 years old, my mom dosn't know about it :)
And here I thought that most kids posted on /. as Anonymous Coward ;)
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
buy jakob nielsen's face on a t-shirt here!
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
Having worked with several "kids community" type content providers, I can say that you're exactly right about all-flash no-content, and it's that way on purpose. The phrase "kids community" is really an oxymoron, I guess; that's because when you try to build an online community for kids, you wind up with two significant problems:
/gasp/ don't tell the advertisers that) so sites and communities designed for kids usually see the worst of the worst come to play.
First, kids don't always mix well with other kids, especially when the ages vary. Open up a chat room (for example) intended for kids aged 8-10 and it quickly fills up with 11-12 year olds whose sole purpose is to disrupt the room, taunt and tease the younger kids, etc. Communities targeted at teens are even more messy, the majority of chat, forum postings or what have you will be nothing but vulgar debates about whether or not the East Coast PlAyAz have more guns than the West Coast RaPpAz. In a nutshell, intelligent kids aren't hanging out at kid sites (but
The second problem is the pervert issue. While I dare say it's not nearly the problem that everyone makes it out to be, it's a very real situation and it's something that needs to be either planned for or avoided as much as possible. Unfortunately, by opening up your "doors" to allow a "community" to grow, you have no real way of knowing who's who, what they're up to, or keeping the bad folks out. Again I'll assert that perverts are not lurking in every chat room, but you can't design a site for kids without addressing the issue somehow.
As most sites have learned, the easiest way to counter these problems is to make it impossible for them to occur. If you don't have a community (chat, forums) you don't get vulgar, hate-filled spewage between kids, there are no chatrooms to fill up with young Eminems practicing their four letter words. And if you don't have a community, there's no way for perverts to make contact with kids. Plus assuming you aren't collecting any info, just displaying cartoons, you don't have to worry about COPPA et al.
This is why a lot of "kid friendly" websites are nothing more than a bunch of big colors and goofy animations... Zero liability and much less effort to maintain.
Marketers (mainstream or otherwise) have no scruples when it comes to targeting children. I'm not giving my kid unrestricted access to the Internet while he's living under my roof.
;)
Now if he writes his own TCP/IP stack and gets himself online, then maybe I'll tip my hat
- The navigation relies on the metaphor model that Nielsen warns against. It looks nice, but doesn't really help the user understand the structure of the site.
- What's the difference between Disney Blast, Playhouse Disney and Kids Island (three of the eight major areas in the metaphor)?
- Two of the major areas are "Entertainment" and "Family Fun." Don't those apply to everything Disney? Vacations (a separate area) are not "Family Fun?"
On the other hand, they do have a very simply stated summary of their privacy policy on ZoogDisney:Warner Bros. (AOL) is is much closer to the mark, but they still suffer from the "consumers will find what they want if our site mirrors the structure of our corporation" disease.
HarryPotter.com is interesting and perhaps even mildly entertaining for kids (though inferior to many of the fan sites they squashed), but what the hell is "Try AOL Free!" doing in the nav with Diagon Alley and Platform 9 3/4? What kid is going to click on that and sign up for AOL? They also offer links to six stores where the Harry Potter DVD will be sold, including their own. You and I know that each of those retailers paid for that placement, but it's confusing nonsense to consumers.
...rather than young vs. old.
At my job, I often find myself assisting adults while they're browsing the internet (we have a lot of free time where I work). I have found much of what was said in the article to be true of adults with little or no Internet experience. I have even found them to click on ad banners without realizing what they were doing (especially those that resemble Windows dialog boxes).
My point is, I think a lot of a child's reactions to web sites is due to their lack of experience (they simply haven't been alive that long yet) with the Internet and computers in general. And that the same can be said of adults in many cases.
You're a god, Klerck.
It constantly amazes me that you, one man, standing alone, are able to constantly find new and innovative ways to break SlashDot. I mean, think about it. SlashDot is a professionally run multi-million dollar website, with four full time programmers on staff, and has all the resources of VA Software at it's disposal. We're talking about THE VA Software here, too -- the company that brought you the incomparable product called "SourceForge".
That you are able to find new and innovative ways to break slashdot every day amazes me, and you have my neverending respect. Almost as soon as you break it once, you can hear the crack staff at slashdot rushing to fix it. Listen! There they are now!
Post through google or your ISP, we don't care!!
Cruisin for Preteens in the PT Cruiser!!! Thank's, Slashdot for this great PT Cruiser now I can pick up all the Pre Teens in my neighborhoo
I think most of the kid site designers are people trying their hardest to live second childhoods. They really, really want to make flashy graphics whirlygigs and the like, then claim it is a kids site after the fact for self-justification.
...with some of Neilsen's findings, specifically regarding the willingness of kids to read paragraphs of text.
In my "real life" job as Creative Director for FoxKids.com, we ran test groups on our target demo (boys 6-11). Specifically, we had them run through pages with varying amounts of text vs. imagery.
We found that kids systematically ignored any text more than two sentences long, or not specifically associated with content they were interested in.
In the case of games, since they were interested in playing they would reluctantly read a paragraph- but it was much more effective to have pictures with one word legends, like "Collect" and "Avoid."
It may sound depressing- "Kid's don't read!" - but you can turn it around-- maybe most of these kids have already learned that most of the text on the Internet is useless filler copy written by marketing droids, and they're just going straight for the interactivity.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
Anyone else notice this one?
Some of the good toddler games have both left and right mouse buttons perform the same "click option". Kids learn that clicking does things, and click away. This is a good start.
But once they move to web sites (i.e. pbskids.org or nickjr.com), sites that rely on flash, the whole left right mouse button thing can be confusing. Especially on a flash, right clicking on it stops the flash.
Solution to this? I downloaded Intellipoint, which gives you some options on how the mouse gets used. It actually lets you turn OFF the right mouse button, which will teach kids (in a wonderfully Pavlovian way) that right clicking doesn't do anything. Good enough for kids younger than 4 browsing on IE. Once they stop doing it, you can turn it back on, and they don't right click on everything.
The study also found that adults were attracted to articles with bolded text which was used for spelling out everything for people who don't like to actually invoke reading comprehension, although some words and phrases were randomly bolded for no apparent reason.
Keep up the good work klerck.
Have you ever wondered why it takes the 4 professional programers at slashdot so long to fix these page widening exploits?
I think its because perl makes coders churn out shit code thats impossable to read...
Well, I don't think that kids are more gullible when it comes to adds, i think that they are more compulsive when it comes to obtaining property, toys. They know its an add, but they decide they want it, and aren't bothered with the fact that its just an add.
You think this might have something to do with the fact that kids aren't doing the buying? I would a lot more acquisitive if I didn't have to worry about my checking account balance.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
That's a classic mistake about sample size and statistics. The relevant sample size has nothing to do with the size of the population in general, and everything to do with a) the degree of certainty you're searching for, and b) the degree of precision with which you measure a phenomenon. I forget what the exact numbers are (as it's been ten years since Stats 220 for me), but that part of the lesson stuck with me: assuming a sufficiently randomized sample, absolute population size simply doesn't make a difference. That's why, if you're not testing a new drug or something, you can get away with much lower sample sizes (and much less expensive test costs).
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
If you ask me, webpages are designed too well. This proves it.
--Metrollica
He sucks cock on a daily basis.
I was at a Mathematics Educators conference about a month ago and got to see some of the new TI calculator models that can be used in the classroom.
Take a look at the TI-10 calculator. I got a first-hand view of this thing at the conference. This thing is targeted for 10 year olds. Personally, the calculator was congested with buttons, too many in my opinion for a third or fourth grader. There are buttons for graphing, charting, powers of ten, and even a random number problem generator. Plus, the display was awful on the eyes (each number was displayed in a 5x7 pixel grid). I tried to ask the representative from TI if she really thought that kids would have no problems working with this calculator. Her response: "I know of kids who are surfing the web. Of course they'll be able to learn how to use that calculator."
I then talked with a calculator distributor, and she said that the teachers hated the calculator, because there were always a certain number of kids that needed help finding their way around. The teachers hated having to give complex instructions such as "Now click on the button that has the square-ish spiral located in the top-center of your calculator." Most teachers were instead just buying the simple 10-key, simple operation calculator from TI that was $5 cheaper (the TI-10 runs at $15, while simpler calculators are about $9-$10). So now, TI is raising the prices of their other calculators to match the price of the TI-15.
Anyway, the point of the story is still the same as in the article:
KISS
Keep it Simple, Stupid!
Get back to the sHack! You know you're not allowed to play with adults!
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Are you new to the web??
as a kid i used to puke reading/watching books/movies/tv programs designed for kids. all my friends too felt the same. the only ones which we liked were the slightly subversive funny and eccentric ones. humour was the biggest point. no wonder harrypotter is a bestseller. kids are very sharp and can sense bullshit immediately far better than adults with their accumulated notions. informally asking a few kids they sasid they like , of all things, google and yahoo for the messenger.
most of them do have problems READING i.e. CLI ( unless their parents inculcate a book reading habit) and the ones I asked, maybe 2-thirds preferred GUI's. but all preferred text only pages because they were fast d/l to a elaborate heavy graphic/flash page.
today chat/web/language is quite different from adultspeak and they're not fooled easily, either.
stupid?! Christ. I'm 15. I know an ad when I see it. I don't click them because I know they're ads. Sound and animation bother the fuck out of me. Looks like I'm in the minority.
Read this Jakob Nielsen (coauthor of this study) article to see why you only need 5 users to find 85% of usability problems and around 15 users to find 99.9% of all problems.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
So maybe they don't have 100% of the answers with this study, but it's still a valid study. (Unless you can assault the assertions made in the article about how many users are needed.)
he is a scary looking man, and his pages are even scarier.
he might know all about usability - but he makes some ugly-ass pages.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I really hope I never reach the stage where I start (as lots of people do) to treat kids as if they were some kind of vastly different group of people, or another form of life. Kids are just (sometimes) slightly dumber people who happen to be small. Why is it surprising that they act like adults?
Dammit, and my mod points expired yesterday...
...the testing shows kids really aren't that different than adults...
Actually, I believe that statement would be more accurate as "the testing shows adults aren't that different than kids".
How many times do we hear that the average adult reads at a 5th grade level? (In a strange bout of irony, this post is written at a 5th grade level.) It makes perfect sense that the web is applied at the same level. Obviously, the study of how kids use the web is good insight into how adults use the web.
Its all about simple things. Shapes, colors, happy faces. Look at XP! The UI is all about bright colors and interesting fake 3 dimensional shapes that look like they were designed by a bunch of 5th graders with little tykes toys.
Regardless, the study's findings are interesting and should be looked at closely by web designers for insight about developing an effective web UI. After all, the important thing is to get your message across. May as well aim the message where it can be best understood.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
My kids love Neopets and Lego. These are great sites for kids and have great navigation -- the never get hung up at these sites. Don't get me started on Disney -- I have to practically navigate for them when they go to Disney.
One thing that kids do a lot (my sample is about 15 kids -- my 2, nephews and nieces and the kids friends) is click all over the webpage if the computer "gets slow" (this kills windows 95 :-).
They also tend to get extremely frustrated if they can't figure out how something works. Really bad or complicated user interfaces at web sites that are important to them (Pokemon, Digimon, etc.) can start them crying. If they leave a web site for this reason they may never go back.
Teaching my 6 and 8 year olds about banner ads only took a couple of minutes. The 6 year old once asked if an ad for "increasing your internet speed" was something I wanted him to look into :-)
Of course my wife or I are almost always in the room with them when their surfing so they can ask for help if they get into trouble.
The 6 year old prefers Mac X, then Linux and then Windows 98. The 8 year old likes Windows and Mac X but doesn't like Linux. There's no accounting for taste I guess.
I agree that the metaphors are bad, but I don't think Disney.com is intended to be strictly a children's site. ZoogDisney.com, for instance, is one of the (easy to remember) sites that is advertised daily on the channel itself, and that site appears much more focused towards children, and the shows that they are likely to be interested in.
After all, are kids going to be doing online shopping or vacation planning?
For this "general info" Disney site, does it really matter where kids go off the homepage? They're probably not going to be looking for shopping or vacations... and every other section has a plethora of games and "minesweeping" worthy content. I don't really think kids care what sections are called as long as the destination is fun.
At twelve years old, that's pushing the upper age limit (or exceeding it) that these pages are designed for.
I'm the stranger...posting to
40% of the boys complained, compared to 8% of the girls
Before I believe this statistic, I'd like to know what qualifies as complaining. I would also like a study done on whether males just naturally complain about everything 40% of the time, which is likely (which brings us to Slashdot.)
i dont think that when people refer to kids as the 'masters of technology', they were ever refering to the '6 to 12' years olds that were studied in the article ... it takes them at least another 4-6 years to be able to attain a l33t h4x0r status, and to be able to work out how to hide all the details that IE stores of their searches for 'boobies' on the internet ...
... insert name of nearest computer illiterate person here ... in my case its the tech support supervisor of the company i program for ... *sigh*
... and sure, they may not be masters of technology, but at least when an error occurs while they are browsing or it takes a long time they dont run around panicing and saying that they somehow 'deleted the internet'
let me guess they tested it on american kids...
europien kids have some common sense and havent microwaved their brains to mush in front of a tv...
(as did their a-dolt counterparts)
I was worried that I have so low adclick-per-visitor ratio on my websites lately, but now I see that I just have to slightly modify my main welcome pages to: "If you are below 18 years old, click ENTER, otherwise click EXIT." Because I have lots of high quality animations there! Kids will love it!
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
Have you ever seen the "you're a winner, click here to claim your prize" ad? Well if you do click there, you find a page with a phone number.
I found this out, when teaching a web camp for kids aged 7-13, when a camper clicked on the ad, and spent the rest of the day trying to claim his prize. He called the number, and found it to be a jewelry store, not the free trip he'd been promised.
Imaging having to explain corrupt marketing to a 7 year old. It's not just annoying, it's irresponsible.
-twb
I am 14 and have been on the net for at least 4-5 years. Maybe I'm not in the majority, considering I read slashdot, but the vast majority of people can distinguish between ads and content regardless of age. If you are, let's say 10-11 or above, I'd guess most times you are using the internet it's for some form of content.
/. However, there is invariably a reason you're on the computer- and it's easy to figure out from trial and error that "you have one new message waiting" or "punch the monkey and win" won't get you to that content.
It doesn't matter whether this content is about sports, video games, advanced nuclear physics, or
I participate in several online discussion communities about a variety of topics. However, I don't usually note the fact I'm 14 when I post. It's sad that just the fact of this can make people take what you say less seriously, rather then considering it for what it is.
One mouse button? Macintosh! Ever wonder why the Mac is so successful in K-12?
--Paul
NOOOOOOO, Right mouse button GOOD! Only Silly macs have ONLY ONE mouse button! Why would you make your superior PC to a MAC? YOU HEAR THAT? the sky is falling! ahhhhhh
"We tested 39 kids in the United States and 16 in Israel, to broaden the international applicability of our recommendations."
Isn't Israel the 51st state?
Some background: I've been running a site called Roald Dahl Fans for a few years now. Since the site appeals to both kids and adults, I've been struggling for ages to find a format that works for everybody. My biggest problem is that most kids would rather send me a question in an e-mail than spend two minutes looking for the answer at the site. I've gone to a lot of trouble to make the site structure as transparent as possible. I even grudgingly gave in and added a search function a year ago. (I know it sucks; I need to write my own. But considering that most of the queries I get now are idiotic beyond belief - i.e. "roald dahl" - I really can't be arsed.) So now I've got Jakob confirming my worst fears that thousands of kids are hitting the site and turning away in disgust at paragraphs - whole paragraphs! - of text. Just wonderful.
You know what? I like the way I do things. Do me a favor and compare my site to the official Dahl site. Is that the kind of site I should aspire to? It's got lots of sounds and animation and crap (of course, it won't work if you don't have Flash), and it's impossible to find a specific piece of information. And what text they do have, they don't allow you to copy and paste from! I couldn't believe it when they launched that thing. Of course it's popular, but are kids actually learning anything? (Not that every site has to be educational, but Dahl was all about literacy and that site has all the literary merit of a Pokemon episode.)
My question is - am I all wrong here to be imposing my idea of how my site should be used on visitors? Just because kids like flashy dancing widgets, does that mean I have an obligation to give it to them? (Actually, the real question here is "Why am I taking Jakob so seriously?")
Isn't it child abuse to force a kid to browse the web on Windows machines?
The age group they were looking at was 6-12 year olds. You're obviously fairly computer literate, and yet you say yourself that you didn't know what an ad was until you were 10. Does it really suprise you that some kids might not work that out until a little later?
Also, children don't like slow downloads any more than adults do. As one first-grade girl said, "Make it go faster! Maybe if I click it, it will go faster..."
Just count as you click till bed time.
If the kid doesn't sleep earlier it will at least learn how to count.+-
If collecting data on children under 13 is against the law, how did they get the data for this study?
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Seperated by IQ? definitely...
Seperated by connection speed? almost certainly, since people have different browsing habits according to their connection speed
Seperated by browser? even the slightest rendering anomyly when using different browsers can cause usability issues
Seperated by personality? Some people are more likely to do one thing one way than others...
Seperated by experience on the web? Again, almost certainly... different people use the web in different ways...
hrm, the statement that kids can't tell the difference between advertising and content is very true. My 11 year old kid brother has a problem, or should I say I have a problem with this. He likes to go the fansites like da black goku, dragonballz.dk etc, but they shoot many a popup and flash at you. He clicks and the next thing you know, "Enlarge your penis" "Fine Pissing Girls", "Britney Spears Nude!". Dialers are downloaded and the homepage is changed, and my tcp stack is fscked. I have to ad aware my system, run window washer and go through it with a fin toothed comb looking at all my directories after he surfs. Worst thing though is that the dialers are not compatible with the dsl modem I've got, so they usually kill the connection. Until I can hunt em down and remove them as well as their registry keys.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
And of course slightly later in life when they're using Windows (or indeed Windows-styled Unix apps) rather than just a web browser, they'll have to re-learn that you right-click to do just about anything ;-)
> The 6 year old prefers Mac X, then Linux and then
> Windows 98. The 8 year old likes Windows and Mac X
> but doesn't like Linux. There's no accounting for
> taste I guess.
You should give the 6 year old some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and spank the living shit out of the 8 year old.
> My question is - am I all wrong here to be imposing > my idea of how my site should be used on visitors? > Just because kids like flashy dancing widgets, does > that mean I have an obligation to give it to them? > (Actually, the real question here is "Why am I > taking Jakob so seriously?") As George Carlin said, "Fuck the children!" Seriously, though, try to remember that it is *your* site, *your* work, and *your* bill from the hosting people. Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law here, and if the users don't like your site they can go elsewhere.
When I was a kid, I had a commodore 64... and even at 6 years old, I learned to be patient with the long load times (sometimes up to and including 4 minutes!) and the occasional game that would not even boot! And of course, I think that having to learn enough BASIC commands to get the machine up and running made me a better hacker today because of it...
:)
Kids today have it so easy... point here, click there... When I was your age, I had to type in BASIC commands, and muck around with programs stored on AUDIO CASSETTES!!!
-Rick
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