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> That may be true in general, but I think what matters is that a screen provides much larger, richer and more complex information and experience than just abou

> That may be true in general, but I think what matters is that a screen provides much larger, richer and more complex information and experience than just about any other individual object in the physical world Children pay attention to very small details. When they are looking at a plant with a spiderweb, they are looking at individual leaves, how the web connects to the plant, the spider, its movement, anything in the web, the colors, how it reacts to the wind, not to mention the 3d-ness of it all. Then they touch things and see how they react, training their fingers, hands, arms and rest of the body to make the exact movement they want, coordinating it with what the eyes see and what the skin feels. A photo gallery in a smartphone is extremely dull in comparison, and that's why they can learn to use it immediately.

GrinningFool 5y ago
> A photo gallery in a smartphone is extremely dull in comparison, and that's why they can learn to use it immediately. I think the reason they can learn to use it immediately is that it's super-simple to learn - tap and swipe, and not very many of those gestures at that. Phone interfaces now are designed to be used by /anyone/ - and that means keeping them simple enough that it can be learned quickly by a child.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Children pay attention to very small details. (...) They do. All your examples are correct, for the first few encounters. Then they bucket these things as "leaves", "spiderwebs", etc. and stop caring. Complex does not mean interesting (see also my parallel reply here: [0]). > A photo gallery in a smartphone is extremely dull in comparison No, it isn't. Not only the photos in the gallery are likely to be complex, with each showing a slice of the real world, they're also likely to be varied - each one may show a completely different situation, scene, context. And they're unpredictable, surprising. The one constant of the natural world is that what you see now is roughly the same as what you saw a second ago, or a minute ago. There's only so much of the world around you, it's persistent, and except in emergency situations, stable. Kids learn to tune it out very quickly[1]. Meanwhile, smartphones are those magic rectangles filled with varied, unpredictable, immediate reactions to input. > and that's why they can learn to use it immediately. Kids are smart and much more persistent than adults at figuring things out, meanwhile UX designers are assuming users are drooling idiots and designing interfaces that are more trivial than those on Fischer Price toys. It's a perfect storm, so no surprise little kids figure smartphones out very quickly. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29113029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29113029 [1] - Not being able to would be debilitating.
- mmustapic 5y ago
  Not my experience at all with kids. > There's only so much of the world around you, it's persistent, and except in emergency situations, stable. Kids learn to tune it out very quickly Kids know very little about the world, so everything is new, amazing and umpredictable. Some rock or stairs to jump from, throwing a paper plane a thousand times, playing the sand building something for hours. With pictures, at least when they are young, they usually want to see the same ones over and over again, and mostly of people they know, but I guess there are kids that like a bit more variety.

GrinningFool 5y ago

> A photo gallery in a smartphone is extremely dull in comparison, and that's why they can learn to use it immediately. I think the reason they can learn to use it immediately is that it's super-simple to learn - tap and swipe, and not very many of those gestures at that. Phone interfaces now are designed to be used by /anyone/ - and that means keeping them simple enough that it can be learned quickly by a child.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> Children pay attention to very small details. (...) They do. All your examples are correct, for the first few encounters. Then they bucket these things as "leaves", "spiderwebs", etc. and stop caring. Complex does not mean interesting (see also my parallel reply here: [0]). > A photo gallery in a smartphone is extremely dull in comparison No, it isn't. Not only the photos in the gallery are likely to be complex, with each showing a slice of the real world, they're also likely to be varied - each one may show a completely different situation, scene, context. And they're unpredictable, surprising. The one constant of the natural world is that what you see now is roughly the same as what you saw a second ago, or a minute ago. There's only so much of the world around you, it's persistent, and except in emergency situations, stable. Kids learn to tune it out very quickly[1]. Meanwhile, smartphones are those magic rectangles filled with varied, unpredictable, immediate reactions to input. > and that's why they can learn to use it immediately. Kids are smart and much more persistent than adults at figuring things out, meanwhile UX designers are assuming users are drooling idiots and designing interfaces that are more trivial than those on Fischer Price toys. It's a perfect storm, so no surprise little kids figure smartphones out very quickly. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29113029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29113029 [1] - Not being able to would be debilitating.

mmustapic 5y ago
Not my experience at all with kids. > There's only so much of the world around you, it's persistent, and except in emergency situations, stable. Kids learn to tune it out very quickly Kids know very little about the world, so everything is new, amazing and umpredictable. Some rock or stairs to jump from, throwing a paper plane a thousand times, playing the sand building something for hours. With pictures, at least when they are young, they usually want to see the same ones over and over again, and mostly of people they know, but I guess there are kids that like a bit more variety.