Designing web sites for children

Each year thousands of children begin to use the Internet as computers are bought for home use, or are integrated into the school curriculum. This has brought about a growing demand for web sites designed for children that inform and entertain.

What do we, as multimedia designers, know about children as users of web sites? Studies in this area are few, but there is a growing body of knowledge that is important to consider.

A survey of the literature has provided some valuable resources listed at the bottom of this feature. Here are a few basic concepts to consider when designing for children.

Children use the web for entertainment and informal learning. Kids in junior high, and older, will integrate the use of the Internet in school related study.
Children have fewer life experiences than adults and don't have a reservoir of knowledge upon which to understand abstractions. Children under eight prefer a picture of an object rather than a symbolic representation. Designers need to be more concrete when presenting information. Explore children's books on science, history, or other topics, and you will find examples of how effective being concrete is in presenting abstract ideas.
Children can have problems with interface design. They often lack the problem solving skills needed to figure out what to do and why something isn't working with a web site. And, as with adults, pages that are slow to load facilitate disappointment and kids move on to sites.
Not all computers that children use at home, or at school, are new nor do they have the latest software installed. Web sites designed to use the latest web plug-ins may not work on older machines. Design for browsers that are perhaps three editions older than the current wiz bang download.
Children enjoy content that is entertaining, humorous, and colorful. The use of animation and sound effects has an engaging appeal.
Children enjoy exploration. The use of navigation metaphors such as pictures of rooms, cities, 3D maps and other simulated environments provide an entry point or overview of a site.
Children find sites that have some form of interactivity appealing. This may be simply coloring or printing a page. Or, it could include creating music, solving puzzles, or other interaction that appeals to a child's sense of being involved.
Children will use the mouse to scan the screen looking for clickable areas. But, they rarely use the scroll bars along the side or bottom of the page.
Children, unlike many adults, find comfort in having instructions. Text based instructions should be about a paragraph in length and avoid the need for scrolling.
Children tend to like fonts that may not appeal to adults. For example children prefer 14-point Arial and the 12-point Comic Sans MS font over the 12-point Times New Roman font or 12-point Courier New.

Children on the Internet. By Dina Demner. This paper discusses the growing use of the Internet by children and suggests design considerations that will facilitate their use of web based resources.

How Can I Make My Site More Accessible to Children? By Michael L Bernard "Children tend to explore web sites because they seek to have fun as well as to learn. Thus, web sites should try to to be playful and exploit their general curiosity by making the site's content attention-grabbing and, to a small degree, challenging in order to entice them to go through the site"

Kids and Computers A collection of resources for designers, producers, researchers, and practitioners of interactive media for children and adolescents.

Kid's Cornor: Usability for Children by Jakob Nielsen. Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing web sites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.

Web Usability for Children by Shuli Gilutz & Jakob Nielsen. A summary of an in-depth research, testing 24 kids' web sites with 55 kids grades 1-5. The report includes 70 design guidelines for web sites for children, and 86 screen shots of good/bad design examples.

When Kids Use The Web. "This paper reports the results of scavenger-hunt usability tests conducted with 16 adolescent children (8 males and 8 females) in two age groups (12 years old and 16 years old), using two general-interest topical Web sites. The tests yield comparison data regarding both search performance and self-reported subjective preferences."