Interface Design, Web Portals, and Children

Abstract

Children seek information in order to complete school projects on a wide variety of topics, as well as to support their various leisure activities. Such information can be found in print documents, but increasingly young people are turning to the Web to meet their information needs. In order to exploit this resource, however, children must be able to search or browse digital information through the intermediation of an interface. In particular, they must use Webbased portals that in most cases have been designed for adult users. Guidelines for interface design are not hard to fi nd, but typically they also postulate adult rather than juvenile users. The authors discuss their own research work that has focused upon what young people themselves have to say about the design of portal interfaces. They conclude that specifi c interface design guidelines are required for young users rather than simply relying upon general design guidelines, and that in order to formulate such guidelines it is necessary to actively include the young people themselves in this process.

Multimedia Mobile Learning Application for Children’s Education: The Development of MFolktales

“…-Use sound and music to attract children's attention (Jakob Nielsen, 2010), use simple and relatively large fonts (Large & Beheshti, 2005), use images and interesting characters with special effects that should not be distracting and are also child-friendly (Jakob Nielsen, 2010), using narration in a friendly human voice with age-appropriate language (Borse, Robles, & Schwartz, 2006).…”

Web design et pratique collaborative : le développement d’un site Web pour la jeunesse

“…Les études sur le développement de sites Web pour la jeunesse Plusieurs études nous ont également fourni des pistes concernant le développement de sites Web jeunesse (Blowers et Bryan, 2004 ;Cooper, 2005 ;Druin, 2005a ;Druin, 2005b ;Large et Beheshti, 2005 ;Large, Nesset, Beheshti et Bowler, 2006 ;Large, Bowler, Beheshti et Nesset, 2007 …”

Interaction-based information filtering for children

“…In this section we describe one of the possible layouts that addresses the main concerns raised in studies observing children interacting with traditional search engine interfaces [8,9]. Figure 2 shows the interface layout that attempts to ease the cognitive load by minimising query-based interaction.…”

“…This leads to frequent revisiting of previous pages or 'looping', as well as spending less time reading a page [3]. Finally, it has been shown that children prefer a personalised interface that reflects their personality and interests [2,10,9], thus creating a more engaging experience.…”