Summary: Designers should consider the physical and mental abilities of children, as well as utilize existing UX conventions. Here are 3 guidelines to consider when designing UX for children, based on our user research with users aged 3-12 years.
Children’s cognitive skills are still developing, so their reasoning abilities are weaker than those of adults. To help them successfully use an interface, designs should display clear, specific instructions, leveraging kids’ mental models and prior knowledge.
Video Author
Feifei Liu (刘菲菲) is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group, conducting research on a broad range of design issues, including the distinction between high-value user tasks and lower-value interactions and eyetracking studies of content usability. She has also researched the Internet user experience for children and the structural differences in the experience architecture of the web in China vs. Western countries.