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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 associatio

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?

morrow 16y ago
For the home button problem - I think a solution would be a system-wide toggle for alternate home button behavior. I actually wouldn't mind a setting where the home button switches single and double-click modes in-app, so that single-clicking while in an app brings up the switcher, double-clicking exiting to the home screen. Mis-timing or missing a double-click to adjust the brightness or pause/adjust background music exiting causing the exit to completely exit can be annoying at times, and I'm not even a toddler :)
epi0Bauqu 16y ago
I wasn't talking about a dev-switch, but a system wide switch for the home button. The issue is not messing with the toddler attention span, but the slow-loading apps. With the toddler in control, they often won't wait until the app loads or they'll hit the home button if it becomes shortly unresponsive, and then they'll go right back into the same app. Yes, this is an app problem that should be solved, but in absence of those developers solving it, I would like to bypass them with my own fix. Wrt to videos, left to own devices, the toddler will often just watch videos, and I'd rather them interact with the apps when it is not video time. When the icon is not there/found, that works fine.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  "Wrt to videos, left to own devices, the toddler will often just watch videos, and I'd rather them interact with the apps when it is not video time. When the icon is not there/found, that works fine. " Ok, thanks. I haven't had videos loaded on the iPad, so this hasn't come up during my field testing. Maybe there's a niche to make toddler videos? Actually, I think there is something much more subtle and fundamental going on here that I will need to think about. When they are driving the app, the toddler is very 'switched on' and they want everything to be clickable and interactable... yet according to what you're saying they switch over into a totally passive mode when watching videos. Fascinating, but begs the question "now that I know that, what do I do?" :D
cfinke 16y ago
> 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_ 16y ago
  Happy Birds.
kevinpet 16y ago
The home button does need an off switch. Your objects are nothing some good design couldn't solve. For example, allow parents to explicitly enable toddler mode for specific apps in settings. Also, allow multiple versions of exiting toddler mode -- requiring press and hold for one second would avoid inadvertent exiting like my son has a tendency to do, while press and hold and password would mean that you can effectively lock your iphone so your toddler can't make phone calls / delete email. I got my son an ipod touch when he was about 18 months old so he could watch movies on long car rides. All the points mentioned are dead on from my perspective. I'd also add two points: - don't rely on audio instructions. a parent noticing that a toddler is getting frustrated may not have heard the "pick the thing with the same initial sound" instruction. Put the text on the screen. - the best upsell is more content. Toddler Teasers Shapes does this really well. They built a complete and engaging game, and offer upsells of more content like colors and letters in the same game format. Actually, toddler teasers does the whole experience really well. The splash screen has text "triple click to access settings" and only one big button at the bottom that says "play". The additional content is accessed through the settings screen.
sambeau 16y ago
I think the home button is a red herring. Toddlers 'get' it. It's the weird inconsistent in-app controls that they struggle with. Red vs green us also something that kids get early. They know about traffic lights and trains (apart from the 10% of colour-blind boys). It's writing that they find frustrating. Writing should be left for over 6s. I've seen learn-the-alphabet (flash) apps with textual buttons!

morrow 16y ago

For the home button problem - I think a solution would be a system-wide toggle for alternate home button behavior. I actually wouldn't mind a setting where the home button switches single and double-click modes in-app, so that single-clicking while in an app brings up the switcher, double-clicking exiting to the home screen. Mis-timing or missing a double-click to adjust the brightness or pause/adjust background music exiting causing the exit to completely exit can be annoying at times, and I'm not even a toddler :)

epi0Bauqu 16y ago

I wasn't talking about a dev-switch, but a system wide switch for the home button. The issue is not messing with the toddler attention span, but the slow-loading apps. With the toddler in control, they often won't wait until the app loads or they'll hit the home button if it becomes shortly unresponsive, and then they'll go right back into the same app. Yes, this is an app problem that should be solved, but in absence of those developers solving it, I would like to bypass them with my own fix. Wrt to videos, left to own devices, the toddler will often just watch videos, and I'd rather them interact with the apps when it is not video time. When the icon is not there/found, that works fine.

Stormbringer 16y ago
"Wrt to videos, left to own devices, the toddler will often just watch videos, and I'd rather them interact with the apps when it is not video time. When the icon is not there/found, that works fine. " Ok, thanks. I haven't had videos loaded on the iPad, so this hasn't come up during my field testing. Maybe there's a niche to make toddler videos? Actually, I think there is something much more subtle and fundamental going on here that I will need to think about. When they are driving the app, the toddler is very 'switched on' and they want everything to be clickable and interactable... yet according to what you're saying they switch over into a totally passive mode when watching videos. Fascinating, but begs the question "now that I know that, what do I do?" :D

cfinke 16y ago

> 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_ 16y ago
Happy Birds.

kevinpet 16y ago

The home button does need an off switch. Your objects are nothing some good design couldn't solve. For example, allow parents to explicitly enable toddler mode for specific apps in settings. Also, allow multiple versions of exiting toddler mode -- requiring press and hold for one second would avoid inadvertent exiting like my son has a tendency to do, while press and hold and password would mean that you can effectively lock your iphone so your toddler can't make phone calls / delete email. I got my son an ipod touch when he was about 18 months old so he could watch movies on long car rides. All the points mentioned are dead on from my perspective. I'd also add two points: - don't rely on audio instructions. a parent noticing that a toddler is getting frustrated may not have heard the "pick the thing with the same initial sound" instruction. Put the text on the screen. - the best upsell is more content. Toddler Teasers Shapes does this really well. They built a complete and engaging game, and offer upsells of more content like colors and letters in the same game format. Actually, toddler teasers does the whole experience really well. The splash screen has text "triple click to access settings" and only one big button at the bottom that says "play". The additional content is accessed through the settings screen.

sambeau 16y ago

I think the home button is a red herring. Toddlers 'get' it. It's the weird inconsistent in-app controls that they struggle with. Red vs green us also something that kids get early. They know about traffic lights and trains (apart from the 10% of colour-blind boys). It's writing that they find frustrating. Writing should be left for over 6s. I've seen learn-the-alphabet (flash) apps with textual buttons!