Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children (opens in new tab)

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 (in a way that does not reflect domain complexity) is in my opinion learned helplessness and complicity. I won’t comment on the cultural observation about music, except to say that might be a practical constraint of content designed for mass appeal. If you want high brow and sophisticated taste you have to accept that your audience shrinks, as a matter of practicality.

> 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.

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.

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 people will use the things they use the fastest. And not having to learn how to use things means people will use them more.

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.

> It does feel like modern designs are treating everyone like children

I read TFA because I thought some of it because some of it could be applicable to attention-deficient adults, victims of the pandemic that started before the pandemic.

Wasn't disappointed. The first observation of FTA is that children don't read, and so are adults; they don't read the docs (and forget about putting helpful info in tooltips and dialogs, they don't read them either), they read every other line in emails, etc. Unless they asked for those texts, and that may be one of the reasons why conversational AI is successful.

> Doesn't have to be bad, but I worry we lose discipline and our cognitive abilities decline when everything is spoon fed.

I think TFA is about apps with unforgiving users, so the author has to perfect the UI; he is a bona fide UI designer. I think the vast majority of applications out there don't have one. As a result the UX is generally passable at best, which adds artificial cognitive overload. You can't really blame users for taking shortcuts such as not reading. I do that, you do that, we all do that.

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.

You both fall for the false dichotomy trap. If anything, this remark should be taken as criticism towards parents who find it much more convenient to use an app and a tablet, rather than buying physical stuff, have to put it away, and to keep a close eye on their kids so they don't ruin the wallpaper or run with pointy pens in their hands etc. Certainly the thing you need on rainy days or when you have other things to do. Uti, non abuti (use but don't abuse)

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 is high for small actions, it also prevent to develop some ability and resilience in navigating harder things. When the software complexity increases, users get annoyed and don't use it correctly because they were never exposed to much complexity before. (thinking about medical softwares that require many many actions to encode a patient, finance softwares, etc..)

Now, not all softwares are made to improve one efficiency. In your case, the app allows a children to express its creativity in other ways, which is very valuable also. So I think it is good that the interface and the interaction are easy, the focus should be on the creativity and not on the manipulation.

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.

I'm working on a game for my kids to play, so I for one am appreciative and taking notes for my own implementation. I've definitely observed at least some of the things mentioned, so hopefully combining those with your others will save me some time and grief. Thanks!

As a parent of a toddler, could not disagree more.

This article can be read two different ways.

A parent making an app for their own children is wholesome and making a list of UX finds is helpful to other parents in that position.

At the same time app stores are filled with games that hook kids on with bright visuals, sound effects, and basic button mashing.

That second use case is vastly more common.

How else are toddlers going to learn how fun a prank call is?

I’m a parent and agree with the assertion that text is visually unattractive and off-putting to most children. I’ve read to my kid (pre K) a lot (a lot), and he can read (a little), but he took more interest in learning to read through an app-based game that applied this principle, in teaching reading skills (Poio read).

It’s not that they can’t, it’s just not fun. Like when I play video games and not liking too much text before the action starts, but with shorter attention spans.

The age group included also has a lot of innocence that should be protected/balanced against future expectations, depending on where they are. There’s a lot of space and utility to letting kids be kids, they trust you more IMO when you do, making later lessons stick better. YMMV

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)

And maybe they do? If you make the elevator more accessible than the stairs, people get lazy.

This conservative approach is widely useful. For example, beginner-to-intermediate tennis games are frequently won by the player who made fewer mistakes, rather than by the player who had more flashes of brilliance.