Many apps for children are designed using paradigms originally tested with adults. In this study, we examine the ways in which apps help their users understand what to do, and we explore the cases in which these design patterns break down for young users. In particular, we tested whether children aged 1 to 5 learned novel touchscreen gestures best from verbal, visual, symbolic, or adult prompts. This work was published at IDC 2015.

Example of a symbolic prompt to teach a child to shake a tablet used in our study

People

Alexis Hiniker
Kiley Sobel
Ray Hong
Hyewon Suh
India Irish
Daniella Kim
Julie Kientz

Publication

• Hiniker, A., Sobel, K., Hong, S. R., Suh, H., Irish, I., Kim, D., & Kientz, J. A. (2015, June). Touchscreen prompts for preschoolers: designing developmentally appropriate techniques for teaching young children to perform gestures. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 109-118). ACM.