I noticed that a lot of apps for young children seem not to test them properly with real children. Examples:
- No / bad multitouch. Children will touch the screen when holding the device and then use the other hand to perform an action. With no multitouch or focus on the first touch action the app does not register later actions and the child gets super frustrated. In addition, with very small hands it is very likely that multiple fingers touch the screen, especially the thumb if the index finger is used.
- Controls close to the edge: On many devices swiping actions close to the edge will trigger phone status menus or switching between apps. This will confuse children.
> Controls close to the edge: On many devices swiping actions close to the edge will trigger phone status menus or switching between apps. This will confuse children.
It is a pain enough for adults at times!
A related issue is how easy it is to trigger your first point (accidental multi-touch, or just accidental touch, at the side of the display due to low or zero gap from the device edge to the screen edge) on many modern devices.
<Kids also love tactility, and the more your 2D app can feel like a real physical object the better.>
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 be bad, but I worry we lose discipline and our cognitive abilities decline when everything is spoon fed.
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.
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?
I don’t have a comprehensive answer to your question. I agree that “user-friendly”
is often a euphemism for “non-technical” or “low code”. I don’t think that supposition is fair, but it is not escapable as an individual. That being said to the extent that the functionality available is useful regardless of the user’s expertise, I think that is valuable. Granted, you will never avoid inherent complexity, for example the task of being an informed citizen does not become easier with better tools, but the inefficiency can be reduced. The user still must participate, however the unnecessary impediments can be removed. I think the value here is not in reducing complexity, but in removing un-needed complexity so that essential complexity can be studied more efficiently. I appreciate your point that “studies have shown…” and that may be correct, however anecdotally studies rarely are relevant to the specific circumstances discussed, and when I hear that phrase I immediately discount the following advice as generic and ill-considered. Authority does not imbue value, and a study is not inherently valid in any other context. I think the most pressing challenge is that the sources with the resources required to publish their perspectives are, rarely, if ever, acting in the interest of their audience… they have an agenda. Realistically speaking, even if complex systems were made easier to use, the vast majority of people who could benefit from adopting them would choose not to do so simply because of their own lack of awareness of the “why” or justification to do so. Usability is necessary but not sufficient. Improving efficiency is only possible when the need for that improvement is firmly appreciated, which in IT is rare.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
I find papers nowadays contain way less content than before, yes the writing is easier to read, but the page count didn't increase, that means that there is less information per page now.
A scientific paper is written for a specific audience, experts in that field, and when you read many papers, it's very annoying 'easy writing' because you need to rapidly understand the meat of the paper, not being introduced again and again to your subject. Now it's more difficult to find the details that you need, if they're even written.
It makes maybe the job of a PhD easier when he start studying in the field, but I think we lost something there..
Not all fields are equal, deep learning papers are very easy to read, but also very annoying to read, too many repetitions of something that is explained in another paper, I don't need to read for the 100th time what NeRF is, only what is different in this paper compared to the previous ones. While many mathematical papers are way more dense and target the intended audience.
Increasing the page count is not really a solution either, it is a burden for the writer to continue writing easy things, and for the reader to never find the interesting parts.
On the other hand, when I read a paper that is not in my field, I appreciate the easy to read paper.
I think papers should return to dense readings by experts, but authors should also maintain blogs where the paper is simplified, and those blogs should be included in the evaluation for a PhD. In this way, if you are an expert, you get the interesting parts, and at the same time, if it is not your field, you can be introduced with many good blogs to the field.
I don’t agree, the vibe I got from that was about focusing design on things kids like to do and see. I think that was also clear from the no ads discussion.
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.
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)
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 compensated for your time and effort, and that is why we must discuss user retention and monetization. These are not dirty or exploitative terms in and of themselves, they are simply tools used to measure an app's usage and current level of progress towards your goals so that you can react accordingly.
What is exploitative is the way almost all supposedly child friendly apps try to trick or corrupt children with ads and gamified purchases. My post comes out very explicitly against this, which I presume you read.
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.
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.
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!
How is this the top comment? The author's aim is making their app a joy to use because it is for their own children. You interpreted their comment about making things feel like real objects as them trying to hook users like big tobacco? Utter nonsense.
I can't help but wonder if I'm being trolled. This app does not hook kids with garbage, visuals, sound effects, or basic button mashing. The author is also against ads, social sharing (due to child safety), and children being able to spend money in the app.
You say "that second use case is vastly more common", however the author is very clearly aimed at the first use case. Yet you are arguing that they fall into the second.
You called a viewpoint that I share "utter nonsense". So I presented a counterpoint. A counterpoint to your opinion is neither a troll nor an attack on the original author's intent and/or character.
All I'm saying is we can both read the same article and one of us goes to build an app for their kid while the other goes and builds an app that gets other people's kids addicted to it while shoving ads. This has nothing to do with the author of the article.
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.
To me, further highlights the extent to which all touchscreens are essentially "child-level" interfaces.
This isn't inherently bad, but does likely put a hard limit on the complexity (and dare I say, usefulness) of the tasks you can do with them.
If they get you to the complexity, fine (e.g. dialing a number to speak with a human) but also, if they're that repetitive, maybe you don't need a screen (less of this in cars, please)
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!!!
https://www.jonathansapps.com/
Someone recently suggesting this and first thought I came to my mind is prevailing advice is to not show kids screen as long as possible
Delightfulness? I'm seeing some indication "delightness" may be a word (can't say 100%)...but it seems a poor substitution for IMO the natural version of it
It’s a “pun” on the phrase “simplify, then add lightness”. Which is a car design philosophy that amounts to “it’s easier to make a car lighter than it is to put in a bigger engine.”
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.
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-putting to most children.
Nonsense - text is only visually unattractive to children because we treat them like they can’t interact with it. Text is a visual representation of language - if it’s ’offputting’ to your children, you fumbled at the goal line.
For the love of children, stop wasting neuroplasticity. By the first grade, your teachers know how much you promote the written language at home. By grade four, the damage has been done.
Author here. Not every app needs to be focused on teaching kids to read. When my 3 year old was using the app, putting words on the icons was meaningless, and a sign that I needed to put more effort into communicating visually. Older kids can handle more text, but I found that the app could achieve it's primary functions without it, and there is a beauty in simplicity.
Of course I read with my children every day, and they are now both voracious consumers of real world books. I encourage you to do the same. I also included features in Kidz Fun Art that help kids practice their hand writing and math problem solving. However, trying to have every app solve every need for every child (e.g. reading in this case), just leads to an ugly, messy interface that is off putting to everyone. Add lightness - take things away that are not needed.
Exposing text to children in context is a pretty good way for them to learn to recognize words, at least that's my experience. My kid can sort of read short words, but recognize longer words in context.
I would however agree with the article, if we were talking about adult. Previously I worked for a webshop and good percentage of our customer could not or would not read. Sure a few have honest to god dyslexia and struggle to use you site if you use to much text, but even excluding those you'd still end up with a bunch of illiterates who will ignore any amount of text and just look at the pretty pictures and price. You might as well design certain sites for the dyslexic and avoid having to attempt to provide textual guides to morons who refuse to read but will complain at any opportunity.
We where dragged to the ombudsman for a subscription service (which I'd agree was stupid, but we never attempted to trick anyone). The case was dropped when we showed that the purchasing flow said subscription and mentioned the price at least nine times before asking for your credit card info. A number of customers apparently missed that because the lower price was tied to a subscription service.
The article is correct, but it doesn't only apply to children: "Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t (won't) read it"
I notice the app does actually use text, e.g. whenever a tool is selected it seems to describe what it does (with a few words).
This doesn't seem obviously wrong? If you make not being able to read blocking - children who can't read won't use it. If you make reading merely enhance the experience, now there's motivation to learn how to read?
I'm not a child psychologist or anything, or even a parent, I don't know what's best. But it's seems possible to me that this is the right balance.
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
I notice sometimes that there's a feedback loop where children like things that look like toys. Sometimes they say it out loud - look, it's for kids! - and they like these objects because of a sense of automatic ownership. So the whole brightly-colored-sparkly-smiley-plastic aesthetic might have only slight inherent interest for them, and more interest as a signal saying "this is yours, you have permission to play with it". Being covered in writing is the opposite signal.
It's a feedback loop because then of course toys are designed to look more and more like toys.
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)
Kids are mentally not ready to read before some age, and once they are able to learn it takes a lot of training. you cannot assume a 7 year old is a good reader - even if they are the best for their age they are still really bad at it.
if you want quick usage a good graphic is faster than text for simple concept even in the best readers. if you have complex concepts eventually text is better but for the majority of ui text is worse than good graphics for the great reader, and many adults are not great readers.
you also shouldn't assume any language. a little effort with non text based and your app doesn't need expensive translation.
of course a learn to read app needs to provide text. However for most apps text is a sign that you didn't spend enough time in ux design.
I finished Diablo 1 in English at age 9 without being able to understand a single word of English.
Kids can be much more willing to endure not understanding everything as long as there is something motivating them to go forward, in this case cool skeletons, adventure and so on.
- 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.
I noticed that a lot of apps for young children seem not to test them properly with real children. Examples:
- No / bad multitouch. Children will touch the screen when holding the device and then use the other hand to perform an action. With no multitouch or focus on the first touch action the app does not register later actions and the child gets super frustrated. In addition, with very small hands it is very likely that multiple fingers touch the screen, especially the thumb if the index finger is used.
- Controls close to the edge: On many devices swiping actions close to the edge will trigger phone status menus or switching between apps. This will confuse children.
> Controls close to the edge: On many devices swiping actions close to the edge will trigger phone status menus or switching between apps. This will confuse children.
It is a pain enough for adults at times!
A related issue is how easy it is to trigger your first point (accidental multi-touch, or just accidental touch, at the side of the display due to low or zero gap from the device edge to the screen edge) on many modern devices.
<Kids also love tactility, and the more your 2D app can feel like a real physical object the better.>
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 be bad, but I worry we lose discipline and our cognitive abilities decline when everything is spoon fed.
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.
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?
I don’t have a comprehensive answer to your question. I agree that “user-friendly” is often a euphemism for “non-technical” or “low code”. I don’t think that supposition is fair, but it is not escapable as an individual. That being said to the extent that the functionality available is useful regardless of the user’s expertise, I think that is valuable. Granted, you will never avoid inherent complexity, for example the task of being an informed citizen does not become easier with better tools, but the inefficiency can be reduced. The user still must participate, however the unnecessary impediments can be removed. I think the value here is not in reducing complexity, but in removing un-needed complexity so that essential complexity can be studied more efficiently. I appreciate your point that “studies have shown…” and that may be correct, however anecdotally studies rarely are relevant to the specific circumstances discussed, and when I hear that phrase I immediately discount the following advice as generic and ill-considered. Authority does not imbue value, and a study is not inherently valid in any other context. I think the most pressing challenge is that the sources with the resources required to publish their perspectives are, rarely, if ever, acting in the interest of their audience… they have an agenda. Realistically speaking, even if complex systems were made easier to use, the vast majority of people who could benefit from adopting them would choose not to do so simply because of their own lack of awareness of the “why” or justification to do so. Usability is necessary but not sufficient. Improving efficiency is only possible when the need for that improvement is firmly appreciated, which in IT is rare.
> 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.
There should be an age of "supermajority" where a bunch of rights revert to being similar to the age of minority.
And yes, I too have parents of that age, and yes, they're still mentally sharp.
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.
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.
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.
> Books aren't user interfaces that are learned.
They definitely are! We just learn them so young that we forget that we had to.
> 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.
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.
I find papers nowadays contain way less content than before, yes the writing is easier to read, but the page count didn't increase, that means that there is less information per page now.
A scientific paper is written for a specific audience, experts in that field, and when you read many papers, it's very annoying 'easy writing' because you need to rapidly understand the meat of the paper, not being introduced again and again to your subject. Now it's more difficult to find the details that you need, if they're even written.
It makes maybe the job of a PhD easier when he start studying in the field, but I think we lost something there..
Not all fields are equal, deep learning papers are very easy to read, but also very annoying to read, too many repetitions of something that is explained in another paper, I don't need to read for the 100th time what NeRF is, only what is different in this paper compared to the previous ones. While many mathematical papers are way more dense and target the intended audience.
Increasing the page count is not really a solution either, it is a burden for the writer to continue writing easy things, and for the reader to never find the interesting parts.
On the other hand, when I read a paper that is not in my field, I appreciate the easy to read paper.
I think papers should return to dense readings by experts, but authors should also maintain blogs where the paper is simplified, and those blogs should be included in the evaluation for a PhD. In this way, if you are an expert, you get the interesting parts, and at the same time, if it is not your field, you can be introduced with many good blogs to the field.
No, it reads like someone who appreciates why skeuomorphism was good in specific situations, and that this is one of them.
I don’t agree, the vibe I got from that was about focusing design on things kids like to do and see. I think that was also clear from the no ads discussion.
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.
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)
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 compensated for your time and effort, and that is why we must discuss user retention and monetization. These are not dirty or exploitative terms in and of themselves, they are simply tools used to measure an app's usage and current level of progress towards your goals so that you can react accordingly.
What is exploitative is the way almost all supposedly child friendly apps try to trick or corrupt children with ads and gamified purchases. My post comes out very explicitly against this, which I presume you read.
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.
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.
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.
Overcomplicating interfaces is bad for usability even if someone might feel accomplished for sorting through the mess.
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!
So happy to hear it’s helpful! I’d love to check out the game when it’s done
How is this the top comment? The author's aim is making their app a joy to use because it is for their own children. You interpreted their comment about making things feel like real objects as them trying to hook users like big tobacco? Utter nonsense.
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.
I can't help but wonder if I'm being trolled. This app does not hook kids with garbage, visuals, sound effects, or basic button mashing. The author is also against ads, social sharing (due to child safety), and children being able to spend money in the app.
You say "that second use case is vastly more common", however the author is very clearly aimed at the first use case. Yet you are arguing that they fall into the second.
I am not arguing that.
You called a viewpoint that I share "utter nonsense". So I presented a counterpoint. A counterpoint to your opinion is neither a troll nor an attack on the original author's intent and/or character.
All I'm saying is we can both read the same article and one of us goes to build an app for their kid while the other goes and builds an app that gets other people's kids addicted to it while shoving ads. This has nothing to do with the author of the article.
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.
To me, further highlights the extent to which all touchscreens are essentially "child-level" interfaces.
This isn't inherently bad, but does likely put a hard limit on the complexity (and dare I say, usefulness) of the tasks you can do with them.
If they get you to the complexity, fine (e.g. dialing a number to speak with a human) but also, if they're that repetitive, maybe you don't need a screen (less of this in cars, please)
These principles are good for all ages. Similar to how designing for handicapped users is generally better for everyone (see Good Grips).
Generally yes, but sometimes no. Take for instance the requirement to have the fire alarms at toddler height in our local daycare.
How else are toddlers going to learn how fun a prank call is?
This daycare heard about the Marshmallow Test and decided to one-up it with the "What A Tempting Fire Alarm (Oh Wouldn't It Be Fun?)" test.
thats a thing, we are all humans
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 :-)
https://www.jonathansapps.com/ Someone recently suggesting this and first thought I came to my mind is prevailing advice is to not show kids screen as long as possible
Looks like modern UI for adults to me...
What delights me is that your rainbow has brown in it.
[author] If you double tap the rainbow button you can design your own gradient, so use all the shades of brown you like :-)
Orange sir
This is wonderful advice.
A lot of apps intended for mainly adult use could do well by at least considering much of this advice.
Good lessons for those of us working on adult tools as well!
Very thoughtful remarks.
> Simplify
OK: "add delight"
Delightfulness? I'm seeing some indication "delightness" may be a word (can't say 100%)...but it seems a poor substitution for IMO the natural version of it
"Simplify, then add lightness" is a famous quote from Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus (a high-performance sports car manufacturer).
It’s a “pun” on the phrase “simplify, then add lightness”. Which is a car design philosophy that amounts to “it’s easier to make a car lighter than it is to put in a bigger engine.”
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.
>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.
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-putting to most children.
Nonsense - text is only visually unattractive to children because we treat them like they can’t interact with it. Text is a visual representation of language - if it’s ’offputting’ to your children, you fumbled at the goal line.
For the love of children, stop wasting neuroplasticity. By the first grade, your teachers know how much you promote the written language at home. By grade four, the damage has been done.
Author here. Not every app needs to be focused on teaching kids to read. When my 3 year old was using the app, putting words on the icons was meaningless, and a sign that I needed to put more effort into communicating visually. Older kids can handle more text, but I found that the app could achieve it's primary functions without it, and there is a beauty in simplicity.
Of course I read with my children every day, and they are now both voracious consumers of real world books. I encourage you to do the same. I also included features in Kidz Fun Art that help kids practice their hand writing and math problem solving. However, trying to have every app solve every need for every child (e.g. reading in this case), just leads to an ugly, messy interface that is off putting to everyone. Add lightness - take things away that are not needed.
Exposing text to children in context is a pretty good way for them to learn to recognize words, at least that's my experience. My kid can sort of read short words, but recognize longer words in context.
I would however agree with the article, if we were talking about adult. Previously I worked for a webshop and good percentage of our customer could not or would not read. Sure a few have honest to god dyslexia and struggle to use you site if you use to much text, but even excluding those you'd still end up with a bunch of illiterates who will ignore any amount of text and just look at the pretty pictures and price. You might as well design certain sites for the dyslexic and avoid having to attempt to provide textual guides to morons who refuse to read but will complain at any opportunity.
We where dragged to the ombudsman for a subscription service (which I'd agree was stupid, but we never attempted to trick anyone). The case was dropped when we showed that the purchasing flow said subscription and mentioned the price at least nine times before asking for your credit card info. A number of customers apparently missed that because the lower price was tied to a subscription service.
The article is correct, but it doesn't only apply to children: "Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t (won't) read it"
I notice the app does actually use text, e.g. whenever a tool is selected it seems to describe what it does (with a few words).
This doesn't seem obviously wrong? If you make not being able to read blocking - children who can't read won't use it. If you make reading merely enhance the experience, now there's motivation to learn how to read?
I'm not a child psychologist or anything, or even a parent, I don't know what's best. But it's seems possible to me that this is the right balance.
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
I notice sometimes that there's a feedback loop where children like things that look like toys. Sometimes they say it out loud - look, it's for kids! - and they like these objects because of a sense of automatic ownership. So the whole brightly-colored-sparkly-smiley-plastic aesthetic might have only slight inherent interest for them, and more interest as a signal saying "this is yours, you have permission to play with it". Being covered in writing is the opposite signal.
It's a feedback loop because then of course toys are designed to look more and more like toys.
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)
And maybe they do? If you make the elevator more accessible than the stairs, people get lazy.
Huh is there like an epidemic of children who can't read because kid pix doesn't have words in it?
Kids are mentally not ready to read before some age, and once they are able to learn it takes a lot of training. you cannot assume a 7 year old is a good reader - even if they are the best for their age they are still really bad at it.
if you want quick usage a good graphic is faster than text for simple concept even in the best readers. if you have complex concepts eventually text is better but for the majority of ui text is worse than good graphics for the great reader, and many adults are not great readers.
you also shouldn't assume any language. a little effort with non text based and your app doesn't need expensive translation.
of course a learn to read app needs to provide text. However for most apps text is a sign that you didn't spend enough time in ux design.
I finished Diablo 1 in English at age 9 without being able to understand a single word of English.
Kids can be much more willing to endure not understanding everything as long as there is something motivating them to go forward, in this case cool skeletons, adventure and so on.
- 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.