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Programming IT Technology

How Kids Use the Web 183

Posted by timothy from the smaller-humans-with-wrinkly-brains dept.
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!)"
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How Kids Use the Web More

How Kids Use the Web

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  • And today... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Telastyn ( 206146 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @05:53PM (#3346628)
    Bob the Analyst says:

    "duh."

  • Kids being filtered (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cdf12345 ( 412812 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @05:54PM (#3346634) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Kids browsing habits are no secret... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15, 2002 @05:54PM (#3346638)
    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? ;-)

  • Kids Read Instructions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) <bittercode@gmail> on Monday April 15, 2002 @05:54PM (#3346639) Homepage Journal
    I thought it was interesting that children are more apt to read and follow instructions.

    I guess they are used to that from the school environment.

    The report was odd in that they highlight what seem to be significant differences and then go on to say - but those differences really don't matter.

    They do it a few times.

    Is that to keep readers from getting overly anxious about who they want to target?

    Just seemed funny to me.

    .

  • Kids and Adds. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mordain ( 204988 )
    Well, I don't think that kids are more gullible when it comes to adds, i think that they are more compulsive when it comes to obtaining property, toys. They know its an add, but they decide they want it, and aren't bothered with the fact that its just an add.

    Disney et al, already know this, why do you think that advertisements for toys are so prevalent in society. heck the toys are their own adds!

    Adults plan and compare items before purchase(well usually) while kids are more impressed by pure visual and cultural stimulus.
    • Well, I don't think that kids are more gullible when it comes to adds, i think that they are more compulsive when it comes to obtaining property, toys. They know its an add, but they decide they want it, and aren't bothered with the fact that its just an add.

      You think this might have something to do with the fact that kids aren't doing the buying? I would a lot more acquisitive if I didn't have to worry about my checking account balance.
      • czardonic, you are correct. I am 16, not a quite a kid, but still in the custody of my parents. When my dad gives me some money to spend on food or somthing, I spend every last cent. However, when I have my own money, I am a fscking tightwad. I need to save up money for the Geforce 4, you know.

  • When I was a lad (Score:5, Funny)

    by btellier ( 126120 ) <btellier@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Monday April 15, 2002 @05:56PM (#3346651)
    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!"
    • Oh my god, I can't stop laughing.
    • Then again if you were a kid you might not have known what the last word was and just thought it must be a toy. I really must get myself a sense of humour - I hear they're *sooo* funny!

  • As A Parent... (Score:3, Informative)

    by xanadu-xtroot.com ( 450073 ) <.moc.tibroni. .ta. .udanax.> on Monday April 15, 2002 @05:56PM (#3346652) Homepage Journal
    ...I'll have to agree. My son loves to play on Caillou's [pbskids.org] page. Specifically the Find Gilbert [pbskids.org] page.

    The problem? On IE, there are sounds that play ("Caillou's talking to me, Daddy!"), but here on Konqueror, it doesn't play the sounds. So, bringing this back on topic, it's the sounds and flashy type stuff, that I personally find VERY annoying at times, that he loves.

    Kids dig that stuff. Unfortunatly, if some add pulls it off right, he'd be clicking...

    (P.S. He's not even 3 yet, so it's not much of an issue right now, but you see my point)
  • actually designing sites for kids is incredibly similar to designing sites for the elderly. the format is the same; lots of graphics, simple directions, and easy to navigate. the only real difference is that instead of cartoon charecters you use pictures of Rush Limbaugh

  • Kids zone = content free zone (Score:5, Flamebait)

    by Magila ( 138485 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @05:58PM (#3346658) Homepage
    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.

    • The lack of content is very intentional (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:30PM (#3346848)
      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:

      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 /gasp/ don't tell the advertisers that) so sites and communities designed for kids usually see the worst of the worst come to play.

      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.
    • I first went online when I was 12 years old and I very quickly learned to steer clear of sites explicitly for kids...

      That certainly dates you...

    • How can you compare what the internet was like when you were a child to what it is now? The internet has changed incredibly and is will continue to do so.
    • At twelve years old, that's pushing the upper age limit (or exceeding it) that these pages are designed for.
    • Bah, I'm just the same. Look! I'm 14 and I've been reading slashdot for over 2 years!
    • I first went online when I was 12 years old...


      Hey, how old are you kid? Isn't Slashdot a bit mature for you? Heck, if you were browsing the web at 12, the oldest you could possibly be is... erm... uh.. oh. 20.

      I feel so very old...

  • The most notable finding in our study was that children click website advertisements.
    The solution to low click rates [slashdot.org] - just write poetry that appeals to kids!
  • (not just for children either).

    Even if they can be educated to distinguish advertising from content, there are many flashy (and annoying) advertisements that most of us ignore promising rewards like:

    "If this banner is flashing, You've won $50!"
    "You have new mail."

    etc. A completely seperate issue to advertising vs. content is false/misleading advertising. People (hopefully) evenutally learn to distinguish this, however much of this catches adults off guard as well.

    Garth/Darkstar

  • I read the title and expected to see "Posted by JonJatz"

  • Fear the future (Score:3, Interesting)

    by indole ( 177514 ) <fluxistNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:06PM (#3346708) Homepage

    From the article:

    ...but kids click banners. They cannot yet distinguish between content and advertising.
    So the answer, then, for more succesful advertising is even further blurring of content and advertisement.

    Aww, for fucks sake.

    I quit. You win, Mr. Nielsen.
    Sign me up to have the word Sony lased into my retina. Can I please check the weather without monkeys talking to me and cartoon cars driving across the page now?

    • Re:Fear the future (Score:4, Interesting)

      by marcsiry ( 38594 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:47PM (#3346932) Homepage
      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 [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).
      • where the advertising messages are so deeply intertwined with the gameplay that you can't avoid the product shots and ad messages.

        Sounds just like the movies, come to think of it.

        Eat the right candy, and you too can get a friendly alien to live in your closet! (Personally, I was holding out for an alien that preferred M&Ms.)
    • Can I please check the weather without monkeys talking to me and cartoon cars driving across the page now? at first I was like, whoa, this guy is where its at - but after seeing your webpage, it sounds like the price of LSD has gone down in your area... and besides - the sony logo is boring and it would be far cooler to get the nike swoosh etched onto your cornea... get it straight.

  • Marketdriods... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:09PM (#3346732) Homepage
    The suits start scribbling madly: testing shows kids hate slow load times

    -

  • statistical methods? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:10PM (#3346741) Journal
    "To find out how kids really use the Web, we conducted usability studies with 55 children who varied in age from 6 to 12 (first through fifth graders). We tested 39 kids in the United States and 16 in Israel, to broaden the international applicability of our recommendations."

    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.

    • Re:statistical methods? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They should go test several THOUSAND children and them come back with results.

      Well if you want to statistically measure something with mean "mu" and standard deviation "sigma":

      averaging the results from 55 kids will get you down to 1/sqrt(55) = 0.13 sigma
      averaging the results from 1000 kids will get you down to 1/sqrt(1000) = 0.03 sigma

      So I guess you should argue *why* you need that much precision in this particular case.
      • Well if you want to statistically measure something with mean "mu" and standard deviation "sigma"

        I think you're confusing things here. There are a few major components to the equation, which fully is:

        SD"sigma" = SQRT(Variance)
        where Variance = sum(deviations^2)/N
        where deviations are the individual differences from the mean for each observation, and N is the number of observations.
        By saying that the sigma is 1/SQRT(N), you are trivializing the deviations, and I think that's why Jucius Maximus has a point.

        Also, the deviations can be more carefully selected when there is a smaller group.

    • I bet the SCUMWARE operators have much better statistics than this, maybe 5-50 million subjects, over all age ranges... :)

      MadCow.

    • Yeah, but this wasn't a statistical study. If it had been, then you would expect there to be an actual discussion of the statistical methodology used.

      I'm certainly not the person to talk to about the different between statistical studies and usability studies, but it does seem to me that the article does give valuable recommendations to designers who are targeting younger age segments.

    • 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.

      It's actually worse than what you suggest since the respondents probably weren't randomly selected. With random selection, you only need a handful of respondents to get a good picture of the population (for example, just a couple of thousand randomly selected respondents will give you a great description of the U.S.). But they probably just used people that they knew or were available (i.e. an after-school group or some such) - no better than an online poll ("45% of kids couldn't figure out how to use CowboyNeal to navigate the web.")

      I know that Nielsen goes on and on about how you only need 5 or 10 respondents to identify usability patterns. And to a certain extent I think he's right. But there he's talking about adults who have already been socialized in the "computer culture" (for lack of a better term). But these are kids! They're still learning how to use the computer and surf the web. Adults (for better or for worse) have already learned how to use the web - kids are still learning. That completely changes the rules. What may be completely unintuitive to some may be (pun intended) child's play to others.
      • A lot of adults know a lot less about the web than kids. They think of the web as a scary, scary place that can make their computer break somehow. Plus it has porn.
    • Fie, I say. 55 is an acceptable number, as long as the random sample is unbiased and representative. The question is, did they manage an unbiased and representative random sample?

      =Brian
    • That's a classic mistake about sample size and statistics. The relevant sample size has nothing to do with the size of the population in general, and everything to do with a) the degree of certainty you're searching for, and b) the degree of precision with which you measure a phenomenon. I forget what the exact numbers are (as it's been ten years since Stats 220 for me), but that part of the lesson stuck with me: assuming a sufficiently randomized sample, absolute population size simply doesn't make a difference. That's why, if you're not testing a new drug or something, you can get away with much lower sample sizes (and much less expensive test costs).
      • "The relevant sample size has nothing to do with the size of the population in general, and everything to do with a) the degree of certainty you're searching for, and b) the degree of precision with which you measure a phenomenon. I forget what the exact numbers are (as it's been ten years since Stats 220 for me, but that part of the lesson stuck with me: assuming a sufficiently randomized sample, absolute population size simply doesn't make a difference. That's why, if you're not testing a new drug or something, you can get away with much lower sample sizes (and much less expensive test costs)."

        Hm, it does appear that I have jumped the gun on this somewhat and I do agree with your comments about degrees of certainty and degrees of precision. I should slap myself now because my STAT 212 final exam is in four days (heh, I've been studying for CS.) If you are taking numerical measurements and you want 99.95% accuracy then you'll be taking samples till the cows come home.

        But in terms of this specific analysis, I would have liked to see some more information about the randomness (if any) in their sample. I mean if kids in the American or Israeli group all went to the same school or came from the same neighborhood then something is wrong, even considering the fact that it is a qualatative analysis.

        As to new drugs and that, you'd be doing a t-distribution analysis which is specifically designed for less than 30 samples.

        But overall it seems that you have clearly been more logical than me and that you've found a flaw in my logic.

    • Only 5 users needed per site (Score:5, Informative)

      by ObligatoryUserName ( 126027 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @08:26PM (#3347359) Journal
      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.)
      • Not always true! I don't have an easy link to the finished version of this paper, but here's a look at how different people handle vocabulary (definitely one important aspect of a computer interface, as any unix user will agree).

        http://www.si.umich.edu/~furnas/Papers/vocab.pap er . df

        What words one person might think of are not necessarily the same as another persons'. Or another, etc... From your link, I'm not sure for what kinds of interfaces Nielsen claims are based upon "web design"? Raise your hand if you have ever been frustrated by the search feature of a website.
    • Also something most of the good replies based on statistics are missing here is that *accuracy doesn't matter in this case*. The point is taking many anecdotal observations and synthesizing them into meaningful suggestions for websites, not whether 82% or 83% of children worldwide try to punch the monkey.

      That's *why* five people are good enough; the point is to uncover usability problems, not wax poetic on exactly (to the %) how many people hit those problems. (That's another study, which the author has indeed done, but that has different goals, so it has a different methodology.)

      The redundency of testing thousands of people is truly staggering. Translate "redundency" to "money" and you understand why its downright stupid to run a test like this with thousands; indeed, 55 was possibly excessive! 55 was probably chosen because this is a groundbreaking study, and they want to decrease the odds of statistical flukes. To do an actual usability study on a specific site, I'd probably go with 3 girls, 3 boys (in keeping with the gender selection). That'd be plenty!
    • They did not take enough samples. They should go test several THOUSAND children

      You apparently know jack shit about real statistical methods. It was solidly proven ages ago that you can generate conclusions about a city/region/nation/planet with 95+% confidence from appropriate samples (random) of only a few hundred people.

      70ish children is entirely sufficient to draw general observations if you picked them properly.
      • The size of the sample should vary according to the size of the total population. A few hundred is good for a city, but it's not enough for the entire planet. The formula is n=(Z^2*P*(1-P))/D2, where sample size is n, D is the minimum detectable difference, P is the total population, and Z is the 1-alpha/2 percentile of the standard normal distribution.

  • the topic is too vague (Score:5, Insightful)

    by happyclam ( 564118 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:12PM (#3346751)

    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.

    • Kids' abilities vary tremendously
      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.
    • Socioeconomic status matters
      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.
    • Kids have different motivations
      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.

    • Re:the topic is too vague (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Read "sites for kids" as "sites targeted at kids" and it's considerably less vague. It doesn't mean that the site is appropriate or appealing for all kids, just that that's who the site is intended for. Probably dumbed-down, brightly colored, annoying music, and any adverts are for things kids are intended to find appealing.
  • On reading over properly this I get really pissed off. I don't consider myself a 'kid' now.

    'They're also much more likely to click on ads ... but mostly because they don't realize that's what they are.'

    What a heap of fucking shit. I've known about ads on the internet since I was about 10 when I had
    my (god bless it) Mitsubishi Apricot.

    bah this just annoys me it labels kids as (I'm paraphrasing here) 'twats who like flashy lights colours sound and can't be fucked waiting for it' Bitches.

    • Well yeah, that's what kids are, what's the problem?
    • The study covered kids ages 6 to 12. They pretty explicitly stated that.

      Though it does point out another problem with saying anything is "for kids": Some people naturally think of "kids" as elementary school age, and others naturally think of "kids" as early-mid teens.

      As for clicking on ads: I fully believe that kids in the age group, on average (remember, 55 kids spread across 6 years of age!), were unable to tell the difference between ad links and in-site links. Furthermore, I would wager that the ads often were much more attractive to click on (more animation and colors).

      I wouldn't take it all personally if I were you. Unless you were one of the kids in the study...
    • The age group they were looking at was 6-12 year olds. You're obviously fairly computer literate, and yet you say yourself that you didn't know what an ad was until you were 10. Does it really suprise you that some kids might not work that out until a little later?

  • Annoyed (Score:3, Funny)

    by rubinson ( 207525 ) <rubinson@NOSPAm.email.arizona.edu> on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:12PM (#3346757) Homepage
    Boys were significantly more annoyed by verbose pages than were girls (40% of the boys complained, compared to 8% of the girls), possibly because at the ages we tested, boys are not as accomplished at reading as girls.

    If I had Jakob Nielsen (most likely shouting "Micropayments are the answer! Micropayments are the answer!") hovering over me as I tried to navigate the web, I'd complain too!
    • 40% of the boys complained, compared to 8% of the girls

      Before I believe this statistic, I'd like to know what qualifies as complaining. I would also like a study done on whether males just naturally complain about everything 40% of the time, which is likely (which brings us to Slashdot.)
  • Hmmm...

    As for as slashdot goes, I'd probably go here [slashdot.org]. What a cute penguin!

  • And here I thought that most kids posted on /. as Anonymous Coward ;)
  • buy jakob nielsen's face on a t-shirt here [geekstyle.co.uk]!

  • Interesting news for Disney (Score:4, Informative)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:32PM (#3346859) Journal
    Not that Disney execs are necessarily avid Nielsen readers. Disney Sites have some of the worst navigation. Take a look at Disney.com, for instance:
    • 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:
    Anything you send to us or do here could end up on TV.

    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.

    • Excellent post. If I hadn't already posted I'd have modded you up!

      When we redesigned FoxKids.com in 2000, we did a competitive review of Disney, Nick and Cartoon.

      It was simply incredible to me that Disney seeemed to be consciously making decisions that hid and obscured all its content, while Nick and Cartoon adopted designs that "churned" their available content to the top.

      What's more incredible is that they haven't addressed that in the two years since!

      We structured our site based on two things- what kids wanted to see, and what we wanted them to see. To that end, the two main sections of our site are Games and TV Shows (we exist to promote the network, after all). Can't get more direct than that!

      I stubbornly resisted all efforts to create an area named "Fun Zone" on our site-- as in, if that's the zone that's fun, what does that make everything else?- so we ended up with a "Hangout" section for all the miscellaneous content that either defied classification or didn't deserve top placement.
    • Not that Disney execs are necessarily avid Nielsen readers. Disney Sites have some of the worst navigation. Take a look at Disney.com, for instance:

      I was of the five web designers at Sun Microsystems who did the first site for disneyland.com, back in 1996. The site hasn't changed much since then - very little text, cluttered menus, silly clickable Java animations. This is what they wanted. The artwork we received from Disney was crap. We'd actually go to other Disney fan sites on the web and steal their gifs! (Technically, we were just stealing them back since it's all (c) Disney).

      It was still a lot of fun though - when the site was finished, they flew us all down for a VIP tour. We met Michael Eisner, he showed us Walt Disney's appartment, we rode Disney's private car on the train. Fun stuff...

      Oh, and we had a quad-processor Sparc server just for vi. :)

    • Re:Interesting news for Disney (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Vacations (a separate area) are not "Family Fun?"

      *You* take an 8 year old and a 11 year old 340 miles to Disneyland in the back seat of a station wagon, and then you tell me if that classifies as "Family Fun".

    • I agree that the metaphors are bad, but I don't think Disney.com is intended to be strictly a children's site. ZoogDisney.com, for instance, is one of the (easy to remember) sites that is advertised daily on the channel itself, and that site appears much more focused towards children, and the shows that they are likely to be interested in.

      After all, are kids going to be doing online shopping or vacation planning?

      For this "general info" Disney site, does it really matter where kids go off the homepage? They're probably not going to be looking for shopping or vacations... and every other section has a plethora of games and "minesweeping" worthy content. I don't really think kids care what sections are called as long as the destination is fun.

  • ...rather than young vs. old.

    At my job, I often find myself assisting adults while they're browsing the internet (we have a lot of free time where I work). I have found much of what was said in the article to be true of adults with little or no Internet experience. I have even found them to click on ad banners without realizing what they were doing (especially those that resemble Windows dialog boxes).

    My point is, I think a lot of a child's reactions to web sites is due to their lack of experience (they simply haven't been alive that long yet) with the Internet and computers in general. And that the same can be said of adults in many cases.
  • I think most of the kid site designers are people trying their hardest to live second childhoods. They really, really want to make flashy graphics whirlygigs and the like, then claim it is a kids site after the fact for self-justification.

  • Our own focus groups disagree... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by marcsiry ( 38594 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:41PM (#3346906) Homepage
    ...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.
    • 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.

      Hell, I think most adults have learned that too. Probably everyone except anyone in marketing...

  • Flash + Right Mouse Button + Kid = Frustrated Kid (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TrevorB ( 57780 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @06:43PM (#3346917) Homepage
    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.

  • The study also found that adults were attracted to articles with bolded text which was used for spelling out everything for people who don't like to actually invoke reading comprehension, although some words and phrases were randomly bolded for no apparent reason.
  • If you ask me, webpages are designed too well. This [bbspot.com] proves it.
  • I was at a Mathematics Educators conference about a month ago and got to see some of the new TI calculator models that can be used in the classroom.

    Take a look at the TI-10 [ti.com] calculator. I got a first-hand view of this thing at the conference. This thing is targeted for 10 year olds. Personally, the calculator was congested with buttons, too many in my opinion for a third or fourth grader. There are buttons for graphing, charting, powers of ten, and even a random number problem generator. Plus, the display was awful on the eyes (each number was displayed in a 5x7 pixel grid). I tried to ask the representative from TI if she really thought that kids would have no problems working with this calculator. Her response: "I know of kids who are surfing the web. Of course they'll be able to learn how to use that calculator."

    I then talked with a calculator distributor, and she said that the teachers hated the calculator, because there were always a certain number of kids that needed help finding their way around. The teachers hated having to give complex instructions such as "Now click on the button that has the square-ish spiral located in the top-center of your calculator." Most teachers were instead just buying the simple 10-key, simple operation calculator from TI that was $5 cheaper (the TI-10 runs at $15, while simpler calculators are about $9-$10). So now, TI is raising the prices of their other calculators to match the price of the TI-15.

    Anyway, the point of the story is still the same as in the article:

    KISS
    Keep it Simple, Stupid!
  • stupid?! Christ. I'm 15. I know an ad when I see it. I don't click them because I know they're ads. Sound and animation bother the fuck out of me. Looks like I'm in the minority.
    • I'm 15. I know an ad when I see it.

      Good for you. I'll put a gold star on your forehead. Of course, if you had read the article instead of watching DBZ mpegs, you would know that Nielsen was studying 6 to 12 year olds.

      According to Nielsen, adults are less likely to read the instructions than kids are. Guess you're growing up, Veggie boy. :-)
  • he is a scary looking man, and his pages are even scarier.
    he might know all about usability - but he makes some ugly-ass pages.
  • I really hope I never reach the stage where I start (as lots of people do) to treat kids as if they were some kind of vastly different group of people, or another form of life. Kids are just (sometimes) slightly dumber people who happen to be small. Why is it surprising that they act like adults?
  • ...the testing shows kids really aren't that different than adults...

    Actually, I believe that statement would be more accurate as "the testing shows adults aren't that different than kids".

    How many times do we hear that the average adult reads at a 5th grade level? (In a strange bout of irony, this post is written at a 5th grade level.) It makes perfect sense that the web is applied at the same level. Obviously, the study of how kids use the web is good insight into how adults use the web.

    Its all about simple things. Shapes, colors, happy faces. Look at XP! The UI is all about bright colors and interesting fake 3 dimensional shapes that look like they were designed by a bunch of 5th graders with little tykes toys.

    Regardless, the study's findings are interesting and should be looked at closely by web designers for insight about developing an effective web UI. After all, the important thing is to get your message across. May as well aim the message where it can be best understood.
  • Does somebody have a "registration free" link to the real article :-)

    My kids love Neopets [neopets.com] and Lego [lego.com]. These are great sites for kids and have great navigation -- the never get hung up at these sites. Don't get me started on Disney -- I have to practically navigate for them when they go to Disney.

    One thing that kids do a lot (my sample is about 15 kids -- my 2, nephews and nieces and the kids friends) is click all over the webpage if the computer "gets slow" (this kills windows 95 :-). They also tend to get extremely frustrated if they can't figure out how something works. Really bad or complicated user interfaces at web sites that are important to them (Pokemon, Digimon, etc.) can start them crying. If they leave a web site for this reason they may never go back.

    Teaching my 6 and 8 year olds about banner ads only took a couple of minutes. The 6 year old once asked if an ad for "increasing your internet speed" was something I wanted him to look into :-)

    Of course my wife or I are almost always in the room with them when their surfing so they can ask for help if they get into trouble.

    The 6 year old prefers Mac X, then Linux and then Windows 98. The 8 year old likes Windows and Mac X but doesn't like Linux. There's no accounting for taste I guess.

  • i dont think that when people refer to kids as the 'masters of technology', they were ever refering to the '6 to 12' years olds that were studied in the article ... it takes them at least another 4-6 years to be able to attain a l33t h4x0r status, and to be able to work out how to hide all the details that IE stores of their searches for 'boobies' on the internet ...

    ... and sure, they may not be masters of technology, but at least when an error occurs while they are browsing or it takes a long time they dont run around panicing and saying that they somehow 'deleted the internet' ... insert name of nearest computer illiterate person here ... in my case its the tech support supervisor of the company i program for ... *sigh*
  • let me guess they tested it on american kids...

    europien kids have some common sense and havent microwaved their brains to mush in front of a tv...

    (as did their a-dolt counterparts)

  • 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.

    I was worried that I have so low adclick-per-visitor ratio on my websites lately, but now I see that I just have to slightly modify my main welcome pages to: "If you are below 18 years old, click ENTER, otherwise click EXIT." Because I have lots of high quality animations there! Kids will love it!

  • Have you ever seen the "you're a winner, click here to claim your prize" ad? Well if you do click there, you find a page with a phone number.

    I found this out, when teaching a web camp for kids aged 7-13, when a camper clicked on the ad, and spent the rest of the day trying to claim his prize. He called the number, and found it to be a jewelry store, not the free trip he'd been promised.

    Imaging having to explain corrupt marketing to a 7 year old. It's not just annoying, it's irresponsible.

  • Get real! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am 14 and have been on the net for at least 4-5 years. Maybe I'm not in the majority, considering I read slashdot, but the vast majority of people can distinguish between ads and content regardless of age. If you are, let's say 10-11 or above, I'd guess most times you are using the internet it's for some form of content.

    It doesn't matter whether this content is about sports, video games, advanced nuclear physics, or /. However, there is invariably a reason you're on the computer- and it's easy to figure out from trial and error that "you have one new message waiting" or "punch the monkey and win" won't get you to that content.

    I participate in several online discussion communities about a variety of topics. However, I don't usually note the fact I'm 14 when I post. It's sad that just the fact of this can make people take what you say less seriously, rather then considering it for what it is.
  • If collecting data on children under 13 is against the law, how did they get the data for this study?

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