
How to build toddler app UIs. - elehack
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/04/toddler-app-user-interface-guidelines.html
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sambeau
There's some great advice here.

It amazes me how often apps built for toddlers make fundamental mistakes:
interactions that little, fat 'starfishy' fingers can't manage; instructions
in text rather than voice or picture.

Flash games are the worst for this: at least with an iOS game drag and drop is
easy and intuitive for a toddler - but trying to drag and drop with a laggy
mouse is hard. Toddler will accidentally scroll the containing browser window
or switch apps, which is very distressing for them. A simple, locked full-
screen browser would be a godsend for many parents (which is what an iPad is).

I have found young children cope fine with the one button. Once they learn not
to touch it until they are finished they are fine - if they accidentally push
it they know what happened.

It's also great to see quality, intelligent software appearing for small
children: Balloonimals is a constant favourite, Ramp Champ should be rebranded
for the under-5s as it has just enough gameplay for them.

Something interesting: as my kids (6 & 8) have grown up playing iPhone games
with tilt control they get very frustrated when they play games with button-
only control. They naturally try to tilt the device. It shows that the next
generation of gamers have no need for physical buttons - something that we
were told was _essential_ for gamers.

I've been meaning to write a blog post about this subject for years.

~~~
sambeau
Two surprising companies that have made these mistakes with their childrens'
flash games: BBC & Sesame Street.

Having put so much research and effort into getting their programming right
it's sad that they could be so slap-dash with their online content.

~~~
wallflower
You might be interested in this behind the scenes recap of the making of one
of the Sesame Street iPad apps (it focused on the technical porting
challenges)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/behind...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/behind-
the-scenes-making-sesame-streets-ipad-app/69589/)

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Stormbringer
I would add the additional thing that if you have a big green button and a big
red button, the toddler is not going to have the same good/bad stop/go
associations with those colours. A big red 'exit the app and go spend money'
button is going to get pushed just as much as the 'go back to the game green
button'.

From the article:

 _"Finally, here are some gripes with iOS:

•Home button needs an off switch. I need some way to disable the home button
or make it harder to access during app play, e.g. a triple click or some other
morse code sequence.

•Need a way to hide videos. Eli knows how to get to the videos. He can find
the icon no matter where I put it. I can disable videos through restrictions,
but that doesn't really solve the problem. I would really like to be able to
hide this icon like you can do for system icons on Windows. Another option
would be to put the restriction on the icon itself and force me to enter the
password when clicking on it. Come to think of it, this would work for the
home button too. "_

I very much disagree with the first point. It makes your app a 'trap' that
even an adult might not be able to figure out how to exit from. This is a
stunningly, spectacularly bad idea and violates the whole "the user is in
control" illusion. If the easiest way to exit your app is to reboot the
machine ... then your app blows, _and you suck_.

If the kid is pressing the home button a lot, and this annoys you, then you
have to think about your goals. Toddlers like to bounce from one thing to
another a lot, and they _love_ to be in control (because they have so little
control of everything else in their lives).

We think of toddlers having short attention spans, but sometimes the converse
is true, toddlers can also have _amazingly_ long attention spans - the classic
example being the kid who sits there and bangs a pot with a wooden spoon for
endless hours.

If the toddler is exiting too often from the app, maybe the problem is not
with the home button, maybe your app is just not engaging enough.

I saw (for instance) one toddler who could spend hours making the angry birds
fly the wrong way. When they do they make indignant squawks, and he loved
that. _Without fail_ any adult who watched him doing that would quickly become
bored and try to show him how to 'do it right'.

\---

With respect to the videos, I'm not sure what the problem is, is it bandwidth?
Is it easy access to age inappropriate content?

~~~
cfinke
> I saw (for instance) one toddler who could spend hours making the angry
> birds fly the wrong way.

My two-year-old does the same thing. He loves the sounds the birds make, but
he gets very upset when the pigs "fall down," so he'll throw the all of the
birds the wrong way, go back to the main screen, choose the next level (that
I've already unlocked), and fling all of those birds the wrong way too.

Rovio should come out with a toddler-focused game that just lets the user
fling an unlimited number of birds into random targets. I'd buy it.

~~~
corin_
_Happy_ Birds.

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ceejayoz
I'd really love a version of the iOS YouTube app that would let me limit it to
specific users and/or playlists I've created.

My two-year-old twins love watching Sesame Street videos, but this afternoon
they managed to pull up a woman in underwear talking about sex off the 'most
popular' tab.

~~~
tjogin
Scarred them for life, did it?

~~~
ceejayoz
Nah, they're far too young to understand it.

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dools
My daughter can play with an iPad when she can go to the store on her own and
buy one.

iPad apps and other forms of educational software, DVDs, CD-ROMs, electronic,
interactive toys are all just bullshit paraphrenalia that pile up in the
garage.

Babies need interaction with _humans_ , and real world objects. Toddler apps
on the iPad are poison.

~~~
Poiesis
That's an interesting point of view. What led you to that perspective?

As for our kids, we found that the TV is _amazingly_ effective at teaching
them, notably for reading skills. That catchy "The B says 'Buh'" song (and its
25 friends) was something that totally helped them remember how to sound out
words. Our eight year old reads like a demon now, and the five year old is a
beginning reader (he started slower than his older brother, but he's doing
fine). The current three year old is recognizing letters and clearly
interested in reading on her own.

It's not like we don't read to them or teach them, too--but it's quite obvious
to us that the TV is scarily effective at getting messages across. If you
think about it, that's what it's designed to do. We just choose to use it
primarily for good and limit the undesirable effects.

Oh, and you should totally see my daughter figure out tangram puzzles on the
iphone/ipod. She rocks at it. Yeah, they like to do stuff that's not
challenging, too (come to think of it, I do too sometimes!). But I'm the
parent: I get a say into how this stuff is used, and I'm going to use every
tool that I can.

~~~
dools
For me, it comes down to a matter of needs. I was reading and writing before I
went to school and it wasn't the result of educational software (actually my
parents used the Glenn Doman method). So I don't need educational software or
toys - I can teach my child reading, writing, speaking and basic maths on my
own.

This extends quite naturally to conversations about sugar and, later on,
alcohol. Children don't need sugary foods and sweets, there is absolutely no
advantage in them, so why would I feed them to my child? When she's old enough
to want a mobile phone because all the other kids have them and they're cool,
the question is "why do you need a mobile phone?". Just because everyone else
has them is not an acceptable reason.

Computers are designed to be learned, and it's easy to learn how to use a
computer (especially something that's basically designed for the "normals"
like the iPad). Hell when computers first came out plenty of non-technical
professionals learned to use them in a very short period of time. I don't
think there's any advantage, educational or otherwise, in exposing my daughter
to that type of technology early on, so why would I? Simply because it's
there?

I harbour certain reservations to do with development of imagination and
fostering an early screen addiction (just the same as I'm concerned about
sugar and alcohol addiction) that come into play here - but those aren't
things that I can point at and conclusively say "if my daughter uses this,
she'll be an obese xbox obsessed couch potato", but the reasoning of
minimalist parenting and focusing on needs rather than wants I think builds a
healthier child.

~~~
cabacon
I just don't buy into the "I didn't need X, so I will not provide X" argument.
It is clear that toddler iphone apps are not required for learning. That
doesn't mean they aren't good at what they do. And, even if they're merely
neutral w/r/t learning, the kids demonstrably love playing with them.

The "love playing with them" seems to apply to sweets too. Kids love sweets. I
love sweets. They're not the healthy part of the diet, but that's why they're
intake-limited, not unmetered.

Mobile phones are useful too. When I was a kid, I was terrible about phoning
home to let them know whose house I was playing at. Knowing that a kid has a
mobile phone that you can reach them on is awesome. The other (cool?) stuff
can just be a fringe perk for the kid.

So, I dunno. The alternative to minimalism isn't maximalism. Things like
access to highly-attractive, disproportionately rewarding relative to their
merits activities can be rationed. But I just don't see not letting a kid play
with things that they think are awesome just because if they were to overdo it
makes it harmful.

Indeed, the concept of self-metering is huge. I've never seen kids explode
quite so spectacularly as when they are released from a restrictive regime
into an environment where they have not learned the habits of self control.

------
citizenkeys
This article apply to all apps, not just toddler apps. As Jack Dorsey of
Twitter said not too long ago, making things that are very simple turns out to
be very difficult.

Simple interfaces with big buttons, modal dialogs always fixed position in the
middle of the screen, and bold colors are the future.

~~~
chadgeidel
I thought this very thing. It's too bad that most app authors (mobile, web,
desktop) simply don't understand this.

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wslh
I was "experimenting" with my little daughter (now 21 months).

The best toddler friendly games that I know is <http://www.fungooms.com> with
a toddler you need to "copilot" with the mouse/touch but if these kind of
games goes to a touchscreen they will be a big success.

Other recomendation is using webcam games to recognize the toddler movement.

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egb
My first iOS app back in 2008 was made for my young kids. A few of the key
design points that went into it:

* Design for right-to-left action, so that when kids tap the screen with the pointer finger of their (most likely) right hand, the rest of their hand doesn't hide the screen. I'm still not sure why so many apps are built left-to-right...

* There are no popups, menus or screens changes for kids to get lost in. Anywhere they can touch the screen, something fun happens.

* Settings are hidden away in the lame phone-wide settings, so that kids don't land in there by accident.

TowerSmash, 99c - <http://itunes.apple.com/app/towersmash/id293910534?mt=8>

~~~
sambeau
Bought. :) my boys might be getting a little old for it but I have plenty of
other kids who like to play with my iPhone. (I think handing your iPhone to a
bored kid is one of life's simple pleasures - I recommend it to everyone (who
has an insured iPhone))

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joetek
"Need a way to hide videos."

Agreed, but even better would be a way to limit users to a certain folder or
screen. I keep all the kid-friendly apps on one screen, but inevitably they go
exploring. I'm always worried that they'll send gobbledygook to an email, or a
status update on twitter or facebook. It'd be great to separate these apps.

For that matter, it's too easy to swipe to another screen. My youngest finds
the app he wants, but he'll try 4-5 times to click the icon, and end up
partially swiping to another screen.

It's also too easy to go into edit mode. My oldest has figured ou that when it
goes all wiggly, to press the home button, but my youngest just gets
frustrated that he can't start a wiggling app.

~~~
derefr
Reminds me of At Ease (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease>)

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andrewtbham
the biggest feature i think ios needs based on my 4 year old nephew using my
ipad? the ability to log out of the app store. there is no way to do it. you
have to wait a certain amount of time.

~~~
lancewiggs
To log out of App store on the iPad use Settings (the app), choose Store, then
click on your email/user ID and choose Sign-out.

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duck
One related question that I was just thinking about this weekend was if people
have similar purchasing habits for toddler/child apps compared to apps for
themselves.

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k7d
Regarding toddlers apps it looks like very few of them have done actual
toddler usability testing.

Also it would be very useful if iOS had a "toddler switch" which would allow
to

1) Disable home screen updates. This is _very annoying_ , often I've a bunch
of my apps rearranged or even deleted by my toddler

2) Disable some apps

3) Any app can read this flag to alter functionality

4) Make home button harder to activate - for example it needs to be pressed
together with some gesture on screen.

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syllogism
Geez. I have no children in my life (even from friends or relatives really),
so I never even thought of this. Very interesting.

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gadders
Just a couple of observations:

1) toddlers and up just instantly get simple touch screen UIs. They are way
more intuitive for them. 2) Free apps for small children that have adverts are
a daft idea. Way too many fat-fingered mis-presses by children (unless that is
the idea....)

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martincmartin
Does anyone have suggestions for good Android toddler apps?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox (linked in the post) is solid (though I wish they
would add new puzzles occasionally):
[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.thup.lunchbox&...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.thup.lunchbox&feature=search_result)

