Touchscreens for Pre-Preschool Audiences?
When it comes to UX & UI design for young audiences (ages 12 months – 6 years) we know that the main hurdle to jump is not that these young minds can’t understand what is happening on a screen, when actually it is a problem of direct vs. indirect manipulation.
The Prototypical Infant "Pop-Up Toy"
Don’t believe me? Let’s start by taking a look at a prototypical infant toy- the “Pop-Up.” Most likely we’re all familiar with this interaction model: By turning keys, pushing buttons, pulling levers, etc. the user is able to make characters “pop-up.” Once a character has been popped, it must be manually reset before it can be popped again.
So simple a 12 – 18 month old can figure it out…
Now, let’s put that Pop-Up Toy on a screen and re-create the interactions so they must be performed via a mouse. How old would the user have to be to figure it out now? Research and experience tells us that users begin to grasp the concept of indirect screen-based manipulation (I have to use this to interact with that.) around the ages of 2 – 3.5 / 4; meaning that our young users are able to understand what it means to move a mouse in relation to a connected screen, and that they might be able to click on a large button. As these users grow into 3.5 / 4 – 6 year olds, their abilities grow with them. Clicking large and medium sized buttons is now a fairly easy task, and the ability to click and drag starts to manifest itself within their skillset.
Keep in mind that there is a very strong possibility that these users can’t even read yet. Key take-away: You users understand the concept of physical buttons and levers.
So this is the bell curve that IxDs have been up against when designing experiences for very young audiences. The question now is how has the touchscreen revolution shook things up? The click has been replaced by the tap. and clicking and dragging is now a simple swipe. Over the weekend my 15 month old niece was in town and while looking for ways to entertain her during a shopping trip I stumbled upon Duck Duck Moose Design’s Wheels on the Bus iPhone app. I downloaded it, and held it up to her to she what she thought about it.
The Wheels on the Bus
The basic premise of the app is that each screen is a verse of the public domain Wheels on the Bus song. The verse is sung/played and will simply loop infinitely until the users manually advances to the next screen. Within each screen are a series of animated easter eggs that are activated by simple taps or swipes.
As song as the app was placed in front of her, she wanted to touch it. When she happened upon an easter egg, she was quick to attempt to re-trigger the animation. She did not seem to recognize “buttons” as much as she associated making a broad stroke across a region of the screen with its resulting animation. Conscious swiping, as an equivalent to clicking and dragging, was still well beyond her cognitive means.
Regardless, I was blown away. Here was an experience that had the interactions been mouse-based, my niece would have to been roughly twice her age in order to effectively engage with. So congratulations to Duck Duck Moose on an excellent piece of UX, and now it is time to go rethink what we thought about our young users.
posted by Dakota Brown on March 25th, 2009 at 8:08 am Permanent link to this post
