8/13/2019 What's Important When Designing a Touch User Interface for Kids Apps

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13Craig Villamor, Director of Mobile UX at Salesforce.comVotes by Maxime Britto, Eystein Alnaes, Justin Maxwell, Ed Nussman, and 8 more.Luke Wroblewski has a good post about creating touch based apps for kids.

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.as...Comment Share Thank Report 23 Feb, 2011Craig Villamor12Maciek Saganowski Suggest BioVotes by Jason Boger, Kat Tanaka Okopnik, Rizwan Javaid, Warren Anthony, and 7 more.Having designed our first app for kids (little ears - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/l...) here are some more points on top of what was already said before (bigtouch areas etc):

don't include a settings button, which the kids can accidentally tap on - and in general - design for incidental taps, if you do need a settings button (anywhere else then on the home screen) - try to design interaction requiring confirmation (first tap: button expands slightly, second tap: only then the settings launch, if no second tap after 1s button gets smaller - First Words did a pretty

good job with this). design for interactive abuse - I mean, kids will (just for the sake of it) tap the interactive element like thirty times in a span of 1,5seconds - be prepared for having your app crash tested in this fashion don't require a lot of precision with interaction - ie avoid having to dragelements along complex paths kids don't have copious amounts of patience at their disposal, doing animations - get them over with quickly, home screen or in-game animations need to loadfast - kids don't appreciate animation efforts if a toddler wants to start from the beginning, he would not tap on a special menu button you might have designed to resume the game and revert back to thehome screen. He would rather press the iphone home button, quit the game entirely and then launch it all over again - this means - no multistage home screens, s

election of modes, etc. the app should be ready to rock and roll straight afterlaunching it recognize achievement with applause, praise etc - and in general, always usedouble feedback upon tapping (sound + changing of property of the tapped object)

Here is a quick video from our usability tests http://vimeo.com/19126882Suggest Edits

Building Great Kids apps

Lata SadhwaniVote by Anurag Rastogi.I wrote this a while back, but still feel strongly about this. Smartphones/Tablets are an amazing new medium for learning. They are easily accessible to kids from a very young age on platforms that are really easy to understand and use. Apps on these touch devices are a great tool to educate and engaget them.

We have developed some of the best apps for children including games and educational apps. These apps have been doing really well for more than a couple of yearnow.

8/13/2019 What's Important When Designing a Touch User Interface for Kids Apps

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In the process of developing these apps, we have identified a few key points which determine the success of a childrens app. We, as developers, make sure we follow these points.

Be clear on what you want.Dont put in too many things together. That will just confuse kids. Chalk out clearly what the app should do before starting

Make it intuitive.A series of apps developed by us have been designed to ease learning for autistic children. The key behind the success of the apps is that kids can easily interpret how to use the app

Dont be boring.While making the apps easy to understand, do ensure that they dont become boring.Spark their imagination!

Make them beautiful.Dont use computer generated graphics. Kids generally like colorful, cute characters/graphics. Put your heart and soul into the design

Dont make it too simple.Kids learn through playing. While being easy to understand, keep challenging the

m to learn new things

Use visuals as much as possible.An image is worth a 1000 words. Visuals helps children learn faster and in a funway. This also helps targeting children from all geographies

Use the mobile platform well.Smartphones are an amazing and very easy to use platform, even for small children. Use this to your advantage touch, audio, visuals

Be gentle.Dont use visuals or audio which might harm them. They are still too sensitive

Be honest.Kids dont understand the difference between play and advertising. Be honest withthem. Dont sneak in ads

Take them seriously!Address children on their own level, in your words. Dont take them lightly.

So what is your next big idea for an amazing kids' app?

*Anyone reading this post, who needs any advice, please feel free to get in touch with me via Quora.