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!)"

Comments

Kids being filtered

[cdf12345]

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.

the topic is too vague

[happyclam]

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.

• Kids' abilities vary tremendously
  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.
• Socioeconomic status matters
  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.
• Kids have different motivations
  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.