I loved "Disney's Magic Artist Studio" ( 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!!!
You can drop balloons full of paint in this, even rainbow coloured paint :-)
Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
71–79 of 79 posts
Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
#72All 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.
I loved your writeup. Thank you for taking the time to share what you've learned.
It's odd to see such nonsensical detractors here on HN.
Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Struggle is very good for learning, I remember as a child enjoying very difficult interfaces because I was proud of being able to navigate the software when I finally get there, becoming very efficient with it, and I learned way more about the domain. (I'm thinking for example Cubase, reason, Photoshop at the time, most linux softwares, vim,...) While easy to use softwares are more 'enjoyable' and the dopamine reward…
Learning can and should be also through practice and raising the bar, I agree, but don't mix learning as a general concept applied to a population with your own survivorship bias.
I think both kind of applications should exist in parallel. I generally dislike current trend in professional softwares that try to be easy to use, at the cost of less power or more clicks to do a simple action.
Professional apps should stay professional and more time should be spent in training power users.
I'm trying not to mix with my own survivorship bias,but I tend to believe that current trends of design remove the existance of advanced users at a young age. The applications are so polished and limiting that you don't spend time trying to do complex things with them.
I find bugs in old apps were a feature for learning. If it doesn't work, you try to understand why. Curiosity is intrinsic to young children, until we remove it by giving them something that never bug or limits their possibilities.
Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
#74>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.
Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
#75Earlier 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 think it's more that people are designing things with the intention of never creating documentation. The analogy with books doesn't really work for me because of that. Books aren't user interfaces that are learned. The main UI parts of books to learn are page numbers, tables of contents, indexes and glossaries. They're not necessarily intuitive but they are pretty universal and standardized. The reality is that peo…
> Books aren't user interfaces that are learned.
They definitely are! We just learn them so young that we forget that we had to.
Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which of my rights do you want to take away without caring if I'm impaired or not?
The rights of minors are taken away without caring if they're impaired or not. At completely different ages across different territories, showing how it's comparably arbitrary if so. Voting should be weighted compared to average remaining life expectancy, for one.
All minors are impaired to some degree since their brains are still developing.
https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Fam...
Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It would help if you hadn't repeatedly used exploitative marketing/business language like “user retention” and “monetization”. Your desire to delight children and make them smile is commendable if that is the end-goal, but the text reads like the end-goal is to hook children and make money off of them.
This actually captured my intended point, which was expressed poorly and hastily. It's not my intention to twist or neglect the good intentions of the OP in designing an app for his kids, merely pointing out that some of the language read more sinister.
Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
#78>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.
[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.
Re: Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would help if you hadn't repeatedly used exploitative marketing/business language like “user retention” and “monetization”. Your desire to delight children and make them smile is commendable if that is the end-goal, but the text reads like the end-goal is to hook children and make money off of them.
The app's audience is children. The blog post's audience are professional designers and engineers. I am speaking their language. People build apps for a variety of reasons - I started off with this app just making it for my kids, until I decided to make an effort to find more users - and one of those reasons is to make a living off the time spent working on it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with hoping to be comp…
I did, and I do genuinely find your project (and approach) commendable! I'm sorry I didn't say that because of the focus of my comment.
I was merely responding to the kind of language you used to describe it. You call it the language of designers and engineers, but I'm sorry, that's not my language! To me, that is the language of commercial entrepreneurs and capitalists and they give me a gag reflex.
I would love for you (and everyone else) to be able to live in a world where you can pursue this kind of passion project without having to worry about “making a living”. The commercial and capitalist mindset is what's standing in your way.