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Children's online interfaces: is usability testing worthwhile?

Published: 01 July 2003 Publication History
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    'Designing for usability' refers to the activity of incorporating research about how people use interactive interfaces into the design process. In our specific case, it refers to designers of children's products taking into consideration how the children use different software that they encounter.Many organizations that develop new interactive environments for children do not incorporate usability studies, or they do so without a good understanding of the complexity and consequences of these issues. The end results are websites and programs that children cannot use - and therefore will not use. In some cases many of the educational benefits and creative ideas developed are never utilized, because children do not pass the interface hurdle.The participating panel members have unique views about the role and value of usability studies on the design process. With an emphasis on the design of online environments, they will discuss their personal experiences of designing for usability, and will offer their understanding of the significance of usability in the design of interactive environments for kids.

    References

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    Druin, A., Bederson, B., Weeks, A., Farber, A., Grosjean, J., Guha, M. L., Hourcade, J. P., Lee, J., Liao, S., Reuter, K., Rose, A., Takayama, Y., & Zhang, L. (2003) The International Children's Digital Library: Description and Analysis of First Use. First Monday, www.firstmonday.org
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    Fisch, S. M. (in press). Challenges for the future of educational media. In E. L. Palmer & B. Young (Eds.), The faces of televisual media: Teaching, violence, selling to children (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
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    Fisch, S. M. (in press). Characteristics of effective materials for informal education: A cross-media comparison of television, magazines, and interactive media. In M. Rabinowitz, F. C. Blumberg, & E. Everson (Eds.), The impact of media and technology on instruction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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    Fisch, S. M., Shulman, J. S., Akerman, A., & Levin, G. (2002). Reading between the pixels: Parent-child interaction while reading online storybooks. Early Education and Development, 13, 435--451
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    Gilutz, S. and Nielsen, J., (2002). Usability of Websites for Children: 70 Design Guidelines. Nielsen Norman Group, www.nngroup.com/reports/kids/
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    Markopoulos, P. and Bekker, M. (2003) On the assessment of usability testing methods for children, Interacting with Computers, Vol. 15/2, May 2003: Special Issue: on Interaction design and children, pp. 227--243.
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    Read, J. C., S. J. MacFarlane, et al. (2001). Measuring the Usability of Text Input Methods for Children. Proceedings of HCI 2001, Lille, France, Springer Verlag.
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    Cited By

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    • (2022)Effect of colour sensing and drawing pen on children’s colour perception and feature detection of objects when drawingBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2022.207176442:9(1311-1323)Online publication date: 6-May-2022
    • (2013)Exploring Evaluation Techniques for Children’s WebsitesCases on Usability Engineering10.4018/978-1-4666-4046-7.ch001(1-25)Online publication date: 2013

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    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    IDC '03: Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Interaction design and children
    July 2003
    164 pages
    ISBN:158113732X
    DOI:10.1145/953536
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 01 July 2003

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    Author Tags

    1. children
    2. design process
    3. online interfaces
    4. usability

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    IDC03
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    IDC03: Interaction Design and Children
    July 1 - 3, 2003
    Preston, England

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

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    View all
    • (2022)Effect of colour sensing and drawing pen on children’s colour perception and feature detection of objects when drawingBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2022.207176442:9(1311-1323)Online publication date: 6-May-2022
    • (2013)Exploring Evaluation Techniques for Children’s WebsitesCases on Usability Engineering10.4018/978-1-4666-4046-7.ch001(1-25)Online publication date: 2013

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