University of Central Lancashire | jcread@uclan.ac.uk
Panos Markopoulos
Eindhoven University of Technology | p.markopoulos@tue.nl
November + December 2008
It was Peter Medawar who wrote, “Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in....” The world of interactive technology changes so rapidly that for most adult observers, the interactive world inhabited by children is both unknown and, once entered into, under-comprehended.
Some interaction design researchers have tried to make sense of children’s interactive technology by immersing themselves, as much as they are able, in children’s worlds. In particular, these researchers place great emphasis on involving children in the design and evaluation of interactive technologies, both to learn about the technologies and to learn about children’s interactions.
This immersion was, to some extent, a result of the considerable activity in the study of interactive technology for children that took place about 10 years ago. One product of this era was the seminal work by Hanna, Risden et al. on usability testing with children [ 1]. This work was published in interactions at a time when the emphasis on the design of interactive technology for children was shifting from a concern with educational aspects to a more general interest in designing for children [ 2].
As it was set in an industrial landscape (the authors of this work were usability engineers at Microsoft), the paper provided well-considered advice for “would-be” evaluators of children’s interactive technology at a time when the inclusion of children in the testing and design of their own products was only really just gaining ground.
sion with children. This advice included:
• Make the lab child friendly
• Use input devices that the children are familiar with
• Use recording devices and one-way mirrors sympathetically
• Give younger children shorter lab times than older ones
• Be aware that children get tired; shuffle tasks around
The authors then made several suggestions for how to make children comfortable. They described some methods for getting to know the children and making small talk with them. They emphasized the need to make children aware that the interactive technology, not the child, was what was being tested. They also stressed the need to ensure that the children’s expectations were met (if they came expecting fun—they should have fun!). Instructions were included for would-be evaluators about how to make the children, and their parents and siblings, comfortable in the lab and the area of test task design—test tasks that can be broken down into bite-size chunks—was discussed as well. In particular, it was stressed that the evaluator needed to ensure that all children, including those with reading difficulties, could easily understand any instructions associated with the test.
[ 1] Hanna, L., K. Risden,
and K. Alexander.
“Guidelines for Usability
Testing with Children.”
interactions 4, no. 5
(1997): 9-14.
[ 2] Druin, A., ed., The
Design of Children’s
Technology. San
Francisco: Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers,
1999.
[ 3] Höysniemi, J., P.
Hämäläinen, and L.
Turkki, “Using Peer
Tutoring in Evaluating
the Usability of a
Physically Interactive
Computer Game.”
Interacting with
Computers, 15, no, 2
(2003): 203 - 225.
[ 4] Baau w, E.,
M.M. Bekker, and
W. Barendregt. “A
Structured Expert
Evaluation Method
for the Evaluation of
Children’s Computer
Games.” In Human-
Computer Interaction–
INTERACT 2005., edited
by Maria Francesca
Costabile and Fabio
Paternò, New York:
Springer, 2005.
[ 5] Als, B. S., J. J.
Jensen, and M.B. Skov.
“Comparison of think-
aloud and constructive
interaction in usability
testing with children.”
Working paper, IDC
‘05, Boulder, Colo.,
2005.
[ 6] Read, J.C. and S.J.
MacFarlane. “Using
the Fun Toolkit and
Other Survey Methods
to Gather Opinions
in Child Computer
Interaction.” Working
paper, IDC ‘06,
Tampere, Finland, 2006.
So What Did We Know 10 Years Ago? The paper offered practical advice regarding the setup and planning of a lab-based evaluation ses-
If time stood still, and technology and children never changed, the original work by Hanna, Risden et al. would no doubt still be as valid now as it was then. But as we all know, nothing stays the same, and in the dynamic area of interactive technology and children, change is inevitable and rapid.
References:
Archives