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Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

shaneosullivan.wordpress.com

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Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#31

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.

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…

I would put another spin on it: We place more value on not being hostile to readers and users in general. For example, I noticed that the good papers are less horribly written now then they were in the past. In academia, being difficult to read and understand used to be a sign of sophistication (but more realistically serves as a way to cover up bad thinking and overall slow down progress). Today, people are actually willing to point it out and treat it with the little patience this nonsense deserves.

That is not to say that complexity does not have merits, but I say let the pendulum swing. I think we could do with a lot less in most areas still.

Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#32

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.

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…

> 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.

While those might all be things 7-year-old children appreciate, they are also things my 70-year-old parents appreciate.

Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#33
post #5
post #3

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-putt…

Maybe they don't need to learn to read through an art application?

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)

Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#34
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Big fonts are not for kids. They are for adults with worsening eyesight, which is considerable amount of population over 40. And I assure you there was parade of super simple popular music 20 years ago, 100 years ago or whenever.

also, accessibility legislation has come a very long way, and in the US no one wants to deal with an ADA lawsuit.

Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#35

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.

This is a good negative interpretation, thanks for bringing it up. For balance, a neutral interpretation is that an app may be better or worse than physical objects. A positive interpretation is that painting apps lets kids express themselves safely and for free.

Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#36
post #3

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-putt…

- 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.

Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 (i…

Yeah, I don't really see the point in difficulty for difficulty's sake. But sometimes there is inherit difficulty: democracy requires us to be informed, and distilling complex topics to a 30 second short might not give the nuance a topic enough; exercise requires us to move, there is no magic pay-to-win.

Studies indicate that tech literacy is dropping, what does that entail for those moments where the more user respecting (as in more secure, preserves privacy, gives autonomy) software is inherently more complex than "user-friendly" alternatives?

Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. While those might all be things 7-year-old children appreciate, they are also things my 70-year-old parents appreciate.

Yeah I intentionally said it a bit provocatively, but I don't necessarily think it is bad. I personally increase the font sizes on my phone as well.

Though while some designs are necessary for accessiblity, some design decisions seem to be cultural preferences: Japanese UIs tend to be information dense, and they tend to prefer it whereas some westerners would probably scream if they had to interact with it.

Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children

#39

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.

Author here. I find this to be a pretty cynical take. I tried to express that if I build something and it makes my kids smile then it stays in the app. You appear to have a different take on it. Should we not try to make children enjoy using the tools they use? What's the alternative? Make you app actively hostile and difficult to they'll go touch grass? I'm honestly not clear on the point you're making here.
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