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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!)"
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 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 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.
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."
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.
...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.
So the answer, then, for more succesful advertising is even further blurring of content and advertisement.
Sadly, yes. The most effective advertising on our site FoxKids.com [caution- Flash heavy and loud] are our sponsored games, where the advertising messages are so deeply intertwined with the gameplay that you can't avoid the product shots and ad messages.
The funny thing is, it can backfire-- when access to a game level is blocked if the kid hasn't purchased a product or received a code, we get tons of negative feedback along the lines of "cut the cheap tricks, assholes!" (except with much filthier language).
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
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."
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.)