10 ms·

Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

203 points by shaneos 1y ago

card_zero 1y ago
What delights me is that your rainbow has brown in it.
- John23832 1y ago
  Orange sir
- shaneos 1y ago
  [author] If you double tap the rainbow button you can design your own gradient, so use all the shades of brown you like :-)
hluska 1y ago
I parent completely differently than most, but this top three really gets me: - Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t read it How do kids learn to read without exposure? - Text takes up valuable space that could be used for better graphics or aesthetically pleasing empty space But again, how do you teach kids to read? - Text is visually unattractive and off-putting to most children. Nonsense - text is only visually unattractive to children because we treat them like they can’t interact with it. Text is a visual representation of language - if it’s ’offputting’ to your children, you fumbled at the goal line. For the love of children, stop wasting neuroplasticity. By the first grade, your teachers know how much you promote the written language at home. By grade four, the damage has been done.
- cafp12 1y ago
  Maybe they don't need to learn to read through an art application?
  - vages 1y ago
    And maybe they do? If you make the elevator more accessible than the stairs, people get lazy.
    - cafp12 1y ago
      Huh is there like an epidemic of children who can't read because kid pix doesn't have words in it?
  - humanfromearth9 1y ago
    Actually, when learning to read, you want children to be exposed for a long time and recurrently to a large quantity of text. The quality of the text should be a later objective, when reading has been acquired. Anecdotally, I've tried to teach my son to read from quite a young age, but it didn't work well, mainly because his brain was not ready for it (that happens often with children: they seem to not understand something despite your efforts to teach them, then suddenly, a few months later, you realize that it spontaneously clicked and they perfectly master the subject/reasoning). Then one of his friends began reading the One Piece mangas (because his older brother was reading them). Like his friend with his brother, my son became intrigued by the story and I bought him the books. That was 5.5 months ago, he had just become 7 years old. He has now reached number 38, his reading ability improved in ways I would have never imagined before. Now he's fluent in reading and started to write a kind of journal. Qualitatively, I do consider One Piece to be poor. Not only the text, also the pictures. Still, the focus on quantity during the last months has fundamentally changed his relation to text and books. Since then, he has also read a number of other books (children novels with almost no pictures) and Belgian/French comics. We'll see about higher quality readings later, when pleasure of reading is deeply ingrained and fear is completely gone. If one is not confronted with text, how should one become fluent in reading and writing? "On ne fait bien que ce qu'on fait d'habitude."/One only does well what one does usually. (Pr Philippe Boxho)
- gpm 1y ago
  I notice the app does actually use text, e.g. whenever a tool is selected it seems to describe what it does (with a few words). This doesn't seem obviously wrong? If you make not being able to read blocking - children who can't read won't use it. If you make reading merely enhance the experience, now there's motivation to learn how to read? I'm not a child psychologist or anything, or even a parent, I don't know what's best. But it's seems possible to me that this is the right balance.
  - mapotofu 1y ago
    I’m a parent and agree with the assertion that text is visually unattractive and off-putting to most children. I’ve read to my kid (pre K) a lot (a lot), and he can read (a little), but he took more interest in learning to read through an app-based game that applied this principle, in teaching reading skills (Poio read). It’s not that they can’t, it’s just not fun. Like when I play video games and not liking too much text before the action starts, but with shorter attention spans. The age group included also has a lot of innocence that should be protected/balanced against future expectations, depending on where they are. There’s a lot of space and utility to letting kids be kids, they trust you more IMO when you do, making later lessons stick better. YMMV
    - card_zero 1y ago
      I notice sometimes that there's a feedback loop where children like things that look like toys. Sometimes they say it out loud - look, it's for kids! - and they like these objects because of a sense of automatic ownership. So the whole brightly-colored-sparkly-smiley-plastic aesthetic might have only slight inherent interest for them, and more interest as a signal saying "this is yours, you have permission to play with it". Being covered in writing is the opposite signal. It's a feedback loop because then of course toys are designed to look more and more like toys.
- atoav 1y ago
  I finished Diablo 1 in English at age 9 without being able to understand a single word of English. Kids can be much more willing to endure not understanding everything as long as there is something motivating them to go forward, in this case cool skeletons, adventure and so on.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Kids are mentally not ready to read before some age, and once they are able to learn it takes a lot of training. you cannot assume a 7 year old is a good reader - even if they are the best for their age they are still really bad at it. if you want quick usage a good graphic is faster than text for simple concept even in the best readers. if you have complex concepts eventually text is better but for the majority of ui text is worse than good graphics for the great reader, and many adults are not great readers. you also shouldn't assume any language. a little effort with non text based and your app doesn't need expensive translation. of course a learn to read app needs to provide text. However for most apps text is a sign that you didn't spend enough time in ux design.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  Exposing text to children in context is a pretty good way for them to learn to recognize words, at least that's my experience. My kid can sort of read short words, but recognize longer words in context. I would however agree with the article, if we were talking about adult. Previously I worked for a webshop and good percentage of our customer could not or would not read. Sure a few have honest to god dyslexia and struggle to use you site if you use to much text, but even excluding those you'd still end up with a bunch of illiterates who will ignore any amount of text and just look at the pretty pictures and price. You might as well design certain sites for the dyslexic and avoid having to attempt to provide textual guides to morons who refuse to read but will complain at any opportunity. We where dragged to the ombudsman for a subscription service (which I'd agree was stupid, but we never attempted to trick anyone). The case was dropped when we showed that the purchasing flow said subscription and mentioned the price at least nine times before asking for your credit card info. A number of customers apparently missed that because the lower price was tied to a subscription service. The article is correct, but it doesn't only apply to children: "Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t (won't) read it"
- bongodongobob 1y ago
  - Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t read it Even if they can read, people still ignore it. Our help desk gets at least one ticket a week like "Help! Outlook doesn't work!" and it's just a pop up asking them for their password.
- shaneos 1y ago
  Author here. Not every app needs to be focused on teaching kids to read. When my 3 year old was using the app, putting words on the icons was meaningless, and a sign that I needed to put more effort into communicating visually. Older kids can handle more text, but I found that the app could achieve it's primary functions without it, and there is a beauty in simplicity. Of course I read with my children every day, and they are now both voracious consumers of real world books. I encourage you to do the same. I also included features in Kidz Fun Art that help kids practice their hand writing and math problem solving. However, trying to have every app solve every need for every child (e.g. reading in this case), just leads to an ugly, messy interface that is off putting to everyone. Add lightness - take things away that are not needed.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
M95D 1y ago
Looks like modern UI for adults to me...
preordained 1y ago
Delightfulness? I'm seeing some indication "delightness" may be a word (can't say 100%)...but it seems a poor substitution for IMO the natural version of it
- justonceokay 1y ago
  It’s a “pun” on the phrase “simplify, then add lightness”. Which is a car design philosophy that amounts to “it’s easier to make a car lighter than it is to put in a bigger engine.”
  - sandspar 1y ago
    This conservative approach is widely useful. For example, beginner-to-intermediate tennis games are frequently won by the player who made fewer mistakes, rather than by the player who had more flashes of brilliance.
- LeifCarrotson 1y ago
  "Simplify, then add lightness" is a famous quote from Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus (a high-performance sports car manufacturer).
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
danjl 1y ago
These principles are good for all ages. Similar to how designing for handicapped users is generally better for everyone (see Good Grips).
- Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago
  Generally yes, but sometimes no. Take for instance the requirement to have the fire alarms at toddler height in our local daycare.
  - _9ptr 1y ago
    How else are toddlers going to learn how fun a prank call is?
    - sandspar 1y ago
      This daycare heard about the Marshmallow Test and decided to one-up it with the "What A Tempting Fire Alarm (Oh Wouldn't It Be Fun?)" test.
- brainzap 1y ago
  thats a thing, we are all humans
Pensacola 1y ago
<Kids also love tactility, and the more your 2D app can feel like a real physical object the better.> All of a sudden, this delightful article about a dad creating a toy for his kids now reads like a big-tobacco eyes-only internal memo: How to hook a kid on a screen when they should be interacting with real world physical objects.
- pbowyer 1y ago
  No, it reads like someone who appreciates why skeuomorphism was good in specific situations, and that this is one of them.
- myaccountonhn 1y ago
  It does feel like modern designs are treating everyone like children. UIs have immense spacing and big fonts, icons always accompany text, company branding tends to have strong bold contrasty colors. Adjacent stuff like music are ostensibly getting simpler. It makes me think that if they designed adult books today, they would be like children's books. One sentence in a big font and one image per page. Doesn't have to be bad, but I worry we lose discipline and our cognitive abilities decline when everything is spoon fed.
  - sudoshred 1y ago
    I see your point but the implied perspective of this take is that being an adult means consistently interacting with systems that are designed explicitly to be difficult to use. I, as an adult, appreciate interfaces designed to be simple and easy to use, not because I need it, but because it is efficient and respectful of my time. Accepting the status quo that systems are expected to be explicitly difficult to use (in a way that does not reflect domain complexity) is in my opinion learned helplessness and complicity. I won’t comment on the cultural observation about music, except to say that might be a practical constraint of content designed for mass appeal. If you want high brow and sophisticated taste you have to accept that your audience shrinks, as a matter of practicality.
    - myaccountonhn 1y ago
prats226 1y ago
https://www.jonathansapps.com/ https://www.jonathansapps.com/ Someone recently suggesting this and first thought I came to my mind is prevailing advice is to not show kids screen as long as possible
jrm4 1y ago
To me, further highlights the extent to which all touchscreens are essentially "child-level" interfaces. This isn't inherently bad, but does likely put a hard limit on the complexity (and dare I say, usefulness) of the tasks you can do with them. If they get you to the complexity, fine (e.g. dialing a number to speak with a human) but also, if they're that repetitive, maybe you don't need a screen (less of this in cars, please)
robertclaus 1y ago
Good lessons for those of us working on adult tools as well!
kazinator 1y ago
> Simplify OK: "add delight"
stevoski 1y ago
This is wonderful advice. A lot of apps intended for mainly adult use could do well by at least considering much of this advice.
katzenversteher 1y ago
I noticed that a lot of apps for young children seem not to test them properly with real children. Examples: - No / bad multitouch. Children will touch the screen when holding the device and then use the other hand to perform an action. With no multitouch or focus on the first touch action the app does not register later actions and the child gets super frustrated. In addition, with very small hands it is very likely that multiple fingers touch the screen, especially the thumb if the index finger is used. - Controls close to the edge: On many devices swiping actions close to the edge will trigger phone status menus or switching between apps. This will confuse children.
- dspillett 1y ago
  > Controls close to the edge: On many devices swiping actions close to the edge will trigger phone status menus or switching between apps. This will confuse children. It is a pain enough for adults at times! A related issue is how easy it is to trigger your first point (accidental multi-touch, or just accidental touch, at the side of the display due to low or zero gap from the device edge to the screen edge) on many modern devices.
dkga 1y ago
Very thoughtful remarks.
the-smug-one 1y ago
I loved "Disney's Magic Artist Studio" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoyg4HB-nyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoyg4HB-nyc ) when I was a kid. You could spray cream onto the canvas, or add bugs and eye balls!!!
- shaneos 1y ago
  You can drop balloons full of paint in this, even rainbow coloured paint :-)
casey2 1y ago
>children should never spend money, this is obvious uh huh? This seems more like it's the authors idea of what he wants children to be than how children are in reality.
- shaneos 1y ago
  [author] It's my idea of how app builders should design and build apps. It's an anti-pattern to build an app that allows children to spend their parent's money without express permission.

203 points by shaneos 1y ago

card_zero 1y ago

What delights me is that your rainbow has brown in it.

John23832 1y ago
Orange sir
shaneos 1y ago
[author] If you double tap the rainbow button you can design your own gradient, so use all the shades of brown you like :-)

hluska 1y ago

I parent completely differently than most, but this top three really gets me: - Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t read it How do kids learn to read without exposure? - Text takes up valuable space that could be used for better graphics or aesthetically pleasing empty space But again, how do you teach kids to read? - Text is visually unattractive and off-putting to most children. Nonsense - text is only visually unattractive to children because we treat them like they can’t interact with it. Text is a visual representation of language - if it’s ’offputting’ to your children, you fumbled at the goal line. For the love of children, stop wasting neuroplasticity. By the first grade, your teachers know how much you promote the written language at home. By grade four, the damage has been done.

cafp12 1y ago
Maybe they don't need to learn to read through an art application?
- vages 1y ago
  And maybe they do? If you make the elevator more accessible than the stairs, people get lazy.
  - cafp12 1y ago
    Huh is there like an epidemic of children who can't read because kid pix doesn't have words in it?
- humanfromearth9 1y ago
  Actually, when learning to read, you want children to be exposed for a long time and recurrently to a large quantity of text. The quality of the text should be a later objective, when reading has been acquired. Anecdotally, I've tried to teach my son to read from quite a young age, but it didn't work well, mainly because his brain was not ready for it (that happens often with children: they seem to not understand something despite your efforts to teach them, then suddenly, a few months later, you realize that it spontaneously clicked and they perfectly master the subject/reasoning). Then one of his friends began reading the One Piece mangas (because his older brother was reading them). Like his friend with his brother, my son became intrigued by the story and I bought him the books. That was 5.5 months ago, he had just become 7 years old. He has now reached number 38, his reading ability improved in ways I would have never imagined before. Now he's fluent in reading and started to write a kind of journal. Qualitatively, I do consider One Piece to be poor. Not only the text, also the pictures. Still, the focus on quantity during the last months has fundamentally changed his relation to text and books. Since then, he has also read a number of other books (children novels with almost no pictures) and Belgian/French comics. We'll see about higher quality readings later, when pleasure of reading is deeply ingrained and fear is completely gone. If one is not confronted with text, how should one become fluent in reading and writing? "On ne fait bien que ce qu'on fait d'habitude."/One only does well what one does usually. (Pr Philippe Boxho)
gpm 1y ago
I notice the app does actually use text, e.g. whenever a tool is selected it seems to describe what it does (with a few words). This doesn't seem obviously wrong? If you make not being able to read blocking - children who can't read won't use it. If you make reading merely enhance the experience, now there's motivation to learn how to read? I'm not a child psychologist or anything, or even a parent, I don't know what's best. But it's seems possible to me that this is the right balance.
- mapotofu 1y ago
  I’m a parent and agree with the assertion that text is visually unattractive and off-putting to most children. I’ve read to my kid (pre K) a lot (a lot), and he can read (a little), but he took more interest in learning to read through an app-based game that applied this principle, in teaching reading skills (Poio read). It’s not that they can’t, it’s just not fun. Like when I play video games and not liking too much text before the action starts, but with shorter attention spans. The age group included also has a lot of innocence that should be protected/balanced against future expectations, depending on where they are. There’s a lot of space and utility to letting kids be kids, they trust you more IMO when you do, making later lessons stick better. YMMV
  - card_zero 1y ago
    I notice sometimes that there's a feedback loop where children like things that look like toys. Sometimes they say it out loud - look, it's for kids! - and they like these objects because of a sense of automatic ownership. So the whole brightly-colored-sparkly-smiley-plastic aesthetic might have only slight inherent interest for them, and more interest as a signal saying "this is yours, you have permission to play with it". Being covered in writing is the opposite signal. It's a feedback loop because then of course toys are designed to look more and more like toys.
atoav 1y ago
I finished Diablo 1 in English at age 9 without being able to understand a single word of English. Kids can be much more willing to endure not understanding everything as long as there is something motivating them to go forward, in this case cool skeletons, adventure and so on.
bluGill 1y ago
Kids are mentally not ready to read before some age, and once they are able to learn it takes a lot of training. you cannot assume a 7 year old is a good reader - even if they are the best for their age they are still really bad at it. if you want quick usage a good graphic is faster than text for simple concept even in the best readers. if you have complex concepts eventually text is better but for the majority of ui text is worse than good graphics for the great reader, and many adults are not great readers. you also shouldn't assume any language. a little effort with non text based and your app doesn't need expensive translation. of course a learn to read app needs to provide text. However for most apps text is a sign that you didn't spend enough time in ux design.
mrweasel 1y ago
Exposing text to children in context is a pretty good way for them to learn to recognize words, at least that's my experience. My kid can sort of read short words, but recognize longer words in context. I would however agree with the article, if we were talking about adult. Previously I worked for a webshop and good percentage of our customer could not or would not read. Sure a few have honest to god dyslexia and struggle to use you site if you use to much text, but even excluding those you'd still end up with a bunch of illiterates who will ignore any amount of text and just look at the pretty pictures and price. You might as well design certain sites for the dyslexic and avoid having to attempt to provide textual guides to morons who refuse to read but will complain at any opportunity. We where dragged to the ombudsman for a subscription service (which I'd agree was stupid, but we never attempted to trick anyone). The case was dropped when we showed that the purchasing flow said subscription and mentioned the price at least nine times before asking for your credit card info. A number of customers apparently missed that because the lower price was tied to a subscription service. The article is correct, but it doesn't only apply to children: "Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t (won't) read it"
bongodongobob 1y ago
- Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t read it Even if they can read, people still ignore it. Our help desk gets at least one ticket a week like "Help! Outlook doesn't work!" and it's just a pop up asking them for their password.
shaneos 1y ago
Author here. Not every app needs to be focused on teaching kids to read. When my 3 year old was using the app, putting words on the icons was meaningless, and a sign that I needed to put more effort into communicating visually. Older kids can handle more text, but I found that the app could achieve it's primary functions without it, and there is a beauty in simplicity. Of course I read with my children every day, and they are now both voracious consumers of real world books. I encourage you to do the same. I also included features in Kidz Fun Art that help kids practice their hand writing and math problem solving. However, trying to have every app solve every need for every child (e.g. reading in this case), just leads to an ugly, messy interface that is off putting to everyone. Add lightness - take things away that are not needed.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

M95D 1y ago

Looks like modern UI for adults to me...

preordained 1y ago

Delightfulness? I'm seeing some indication "delightness" may be a word (can't say 100%)...but it seems a poor substitution for IMO the natural version of it

justonceokay 1y ago
It’s a “pun” on the phrase “simplify, then add lightness”. Which is a car design philosophy that amounts to “it’s easier to make a car lighter than it is to put in a bigger engine.”
- sandspar 1y ago
  This conservative approach is widely useful. For example, beginner-to-intermediate tennis games are frequently won by the player who made fewer mistakes, rather than by the player who had more flashes of brilliance.
LeifCarrotson 1y ago
"Simplify, then add lightness" is a famous quote from Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus (a high-performance sports car manufacturer).
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

danjl 1y ago

These principles are good for all ages. Similar to how designing for handicapped users is generally better for everyone (see Good Grips).

Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago
Generally yes, but sometimes no. Take for instance the requirement to have the fire alarms at toddler height in our local daycare.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  How else are toddlers going to learn how fun a prank call is?
  - sandspar 1y ago
    This daycare heard about the Marshmallow Test and decided to one-up it with the "What A Tempting Fire Alarm (Oh Wouldn't It Be Fun?)" test.
brainzap 1y ago
thats a thing, we are all humans

Pensacola 1y ago

<Kids also love tactility, and the more your 2D app can feel like a real physical object the better.> All of a sudden, this delightful article about a dad creating a toy for his kids now reads like a big-tobacco eyes-only internal memo: How to hook a kid on a screen when they should be interacting with real world physical objects.

pbowyer 1y ago
No, it reads like someone who appreciates why skeuomorphism was good in specific situations, and that this is one of them.
myaccountonhn 1y ago
It does feel like modern designs are treating everyone like children. UIs have immense spacing and big fonts, icons always accompany text, company branding tends to have strong bold contrasty colors. Adjacent stuff like music are ostensibly getting simpler. It makes me think that if they designed adult books today, they would be like children's books. One sentence in a big font and one image per page. Doesn't have to be bad, but I worry we lose discipline and our cognitive abilities decline when everything is spoon fed.
- sudoshred 1y ago
  I see your point but the implied perspective of this take is that being an adult means consistently interacting with systems that are designed explicitly to be difficult to use. I, as an adult, appreciate interfaces designed to be simple and easy to use, not because I need it, but because it is efficient and respectful of my time. Accepting the status quo that systems are expected to be explicitly difficult to use (in a way that does not reflect domain complexity) is in my opinion learned helplessness and complicity. I won’t comment on the cultural observation about music, except to say that might be a practical constraint of content designed for mass appeal. If you want high brow and sophisticated taste you have to accept that your audience shrinks, as a matter of practicality.
  - myaccountonhn 1y ago

prats226 1y ago

https://www.jonathansapps.com/ https://www.jonathansapps.com/ Someone recently suggesting this and first thought I came to my mind is prevailing advice is to not show kids screen as long as possible

jrm4 1y ago

To me, further highlights the extent to which all touchscreens are essentially "child-level" interfaces. This isn't inherently bad, but does likely put a hard limit on the complexity (and dare I say, usefulness) of the tasks you can do with them. If they get you to the complexity, fine (e.g. dialing a number to speak with a human) but also, if they're that repetitive, maybe you don't need a screen (less of this in cars, please)

robertclaus 1y ago

Good lessons for those of us working on adult tools as well!

kazinator 1y ago

> Simplify OK: "add delight"

stevoski 1y ago

This is wonderful advice. A lot of apps intended for mainly adult use could do well by at least considering much of this advice.

katzenversteher 1y ago

I noticed that a lot of apps for young children seem not to test them properly with real children. Examples: - No / bad multitouch. Children will touch the screen when holding the device and then use the other hand to perform an action. With no multitouch or focus on the first touch action the app does not register later actions and the child gets super frustrated. In addition, with very small hands it is very likely that multiple fingers touch the screen, especially the thumb if the index finger is used. - Controls close to the edge: On many devices swiping actions close to the edge will trigger phone status menus or switching between apps. This will confuse children.

dspillett 1y ago
> Controls close to the edge: On many devices swiping actions close to the edge will trigger phone status menus or switching between apps. This will confuse children. It is a pain enough for adults at times! A related issue is how easy it is to trigger your first point (accidental multi-touch, or just accidental touch, at the side of the display due to low or zero gap from the device edge to the screen edge) on many modern devices.

dkga 1y ago

Very thoughtful remarks.

the-smug-one 1y ago

I loved "Disney's Magic Artist Studio" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoyg4HB-nyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoyg4HB-nyc ) when I was a kid. You could spray cream onto the canvas, or add bugs and eye balls!!!

shaneos 1y ago
You can drop balloons full of paint in this, even rainbow coloured paint :-)

casey2 1y ago

>children should never spend money, this is obvious uh huh? This seems more like it's the authors idea of what he wants children to be than how children are in reality.

shaneos 1y ago
[author] It's my idea of how app builders should design and build apps. It's an anti-pattern to build an app that allows children to spend their parent's money without express permission.