Is It Easier to Hop or Walk? Development Issues in Interface Design

Strommen, Erik

doi:10.1207/s15327051hci0804_2

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…While further studies on children's use of input devices could be conducted, including Fitts' law for dragging tasks, and steering law tasks [Accot and Zhai 1997] for the use of menus and similar tasks, these are not likely to be necessary as such interactions are not common in young children's software. Designers have used simple interactions in young children's software because complex interactions are difficult for children due to their still developing abilities [Strommen 1993]. These simple interactions provide a good match for the type of tasks participants completed in this study.…”

Section: Relevance Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An alternative to point-and-click interfaces with large icons was proposed by Strommen [1993]. His proposal is to "hop" between the options in a user interface.…”

Section: Possible Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An interface designed to take into account the motor skills of nine year-olds will not work well with four year-olds. This is an additional reason, besides the cognitive limitations mentioned by others [Druin 2002b;Strommen 1993], not to design interfaces that will fit all children (so-called "K-12", or "all ages" interfaces).…”

Section: Possible Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Differences in pointing task performance between preschool children and adults using mice

Hourcade

Bederson

Druin

et al. 2004

ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.

119

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Several experiments by psychologists and human factors researchers have shown that when young children execute pointing tasks, they perform at levels below older children and adults. However, these experiments have not provided user interface designers with an understanding of the severity or the nature of the difficulties young children have when using input devices. To address this need, we conducted a study to gain a better understanding of 4 and 5 year-old children's use of mice. We compared the performance of thirteen 4 year-olds, thirteen 5 year-olds and thirteen young adults in point-and-click tasks. Plots of the paths taken by the participants show severe differences between adults' and preschool children's ability to control the mouse. We were not surprised then to find age had a significant effect on accuracy, target reentry, and efficiency. We also found that target size had a significant effect on accuracy and target reentry. Measuring movement time at four different times (first entering target, last entering target, pressing button, releasing button) yielded the result that Fitts' law models children well only up to the time they first enter the target. Overall, we found that the difference between the performance of children and adults was large enough to warrant user interface interactions designed specifically for preschool children. The results additionally suggest that children need the most help once they get close to targets.

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Section: Relevance Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An alternative to point-and-click interfaces with large icons was proposed by Strommen [1993]. His proposal is to "hop" between the options in a user interface.…”

Section: Possible Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Differences in pointing task performance between preschool children and adults using mice

Hourcade

Bederson

Druin

et al. 2004

ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.

119

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In addition, a number of basic studies of young children's interface use have been conducted (e.g., Revelle and Strommen [1990]; Strommen [1992;1993]; Strommen et al [1992;). We have learned that, for very young children, a trackball is easier to use than a mouse, which itself is easier than pressing arrow keys or using a joystick.…”

Section: Research On Young Children and Interactivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Educating via entertainment media

Revelle

2003

Comput. Entertain.

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__________________________________________________________________________________________ Sesame Workshop was founded 35 years ago to investigate whether entertainment media could be used to educate children. At that time the medium in question was television. As the Sesame Street television show prepares to celebrate its 35th year on the air, the television programming schedule now includes a wide variety of other educational programming for young children, and researchers are in almost universal agreement that television can be used successfully for educational purposes. In recent years, the Workshop has faced the same challenge with a variety of interactive entertainment media (including videogames, DVD, and interactive television); i.e., these media all might have potential for educating children, but neither the platforms themselves nor the typical programming for these media are being planned with any particular thought toward education. This paper describes how the Sesame Street "experiment" has been continued and extended, by adapting interactive media platforms designed for entertainment so that they can be used to deliver educational experiences to young children. The paper also outlines Sesame Workshop's educational philosophy and approach, as applied in the interactive arena, and identifies some of the challenges and solutions in designing interfaces and interactive educational experiences that can be used and enjoyed by preschool-age children. Two specific research projects are described as examples of this approach: one details the development of an adapted software interface to make console videogame systems accessible to young children and the other evaluates a new approach to creating interactive television programming for young children on a DVD platform.

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“…find discrete movement easier than continuous-that is, children were more adept at moving cursors that automatically clicked onto items ("hopping") than they were at sliding a cursor to an item ("walking") [16].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children and information visualization technologies

Schneider¹

1996

interactions

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Is It Easier to Hop or Walk? Development Issues in Interface Design

Cited by 18 publications

References 4 publications

Differences in pointing task performance between preschool children and adults using mice

Differences in pointing task performance between preschool children and adults using mice

Educating via entertainment media

Children and information visualization technologies

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