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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?
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 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
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)
The suits start scribbling madly: testing shows kids hate slow load times
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
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."
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!
Well yeah, that's what kids are, what's the problem?
sic transit gloria mundi
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
...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.
I thought all they did was look at p0rn!?
I think that for the purposes of this article, you may as well *define* "kids" as "those people too young to have an interest in pr0n".
That whole "J00 will be haxx0red" phase kicks in, in my experience, around age 12 or 13 (and usually ends around age 16 or 17). This article is really about what 8 year olds do on the internet.
And even though I've never run into an 8 year old on IRC or a MUD or anything, the fact that both "Dragonball" and "Digimon" are always in Lycos' top 10 searches is telling. In fact, I believe Dragonball consistently beats even Britney these days.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
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!
czardonic, you are correct. I am 16, not a quite a kid, but still in the custody of my parents. When my dad gives me some money to spend on food or somthing, I spend every last cent. However, when I have my own money, I am a fscking tightwad. I need to save up money for the Geforce 4, you know.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
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.)
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?
...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
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.)
"those people too young to have an interest in pr0n"
This is mathematically equivalent to the empty set, correct?
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 $$$
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?
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.
What?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
When I was a kid, I had a commodore 64...
:)
When I was your age, I had to type in BASIC commands, and muck around with programs stored on AUDIO CASSETTES!!!
hehehehe When I got a Commodore 64 it was to replace my Vic-20
The audio cassette load times sucked, but the part that always irritated me was when you had several programs on one tape and you had to fastforward/rewind to try and find the beginning of the program you wanted.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.