Your clients are eleven or twelve. They read more slowly than you do, and their taps are less precise. An app you find easy may not work for them at all.
Try it first
Pick up your phone and open an app you use every day. Imagine handing it to a Grade 5 or 6 student for the first time, without saying anything. On a scrap of paper, write down:
- the first three things that would confuse them
- anything they could tap by accident that would be hard to undo
- how many words they would have to read before they could do anything
Keep your list. Bring it to class.
Six things that help
1. Big targets. Buttons should be much bigger than you think, with space between them. Small fingers miss.
2. Very little reading. Use pictures, icons and a few words. If you need a sentence of instructions, try to cut it. If you need a paragraph, redesign the screen.
3. One thing per screen. One question, one choice, one action. Adults tolerate busy screens. Children stall.
4. Forgiving. A wrong tap should never lose progress or be hard to undo. There should always be an obvious way back.
5. Feedback right away. Every tap should do something the child can see or hear. A button that seems to do nothing gets tapped ten more times.
6. Encouraging, not punishing. No red crosses, no “WRONG”. Show the right answer kindly and let them try again.
And one rule that is not about design
Your app collects nothing. No names, no accounts, no Internet. See Keeping our clients safe.
Curriculum connection
CRD-2.F
Design a program and its user interface.
CRD-2.F.1 The design of a program incorporates investigation to determine its requirements.
CRD-2.F.2 Investigation in a development process is useful for understanding and identifying the program constraints, as well as the concerns and interests of the people who will use the program.
CRD-2.F.3 Some ways investigation can be performed are as follows:
- collecting data through surveys
- user testing
- interviews
- direct observations
CRD-2.F.4 Program requirements describe how a program functions and may include a description of user interactions that a program must provide.
CRD-2.F.5 A program’s specification defines the requirements for the program.
CRD-2.F.6 In a development process, the design phase outlines how to accomplish a given program specification.
CRD-2.F.7 The design phase of a program may include:
Link to original
- brainstorming
- planning and storyboarding
- organizing the program into modules and functional components
- creation of diagrams that represent the layouts of the user interface
- development of a testing strategy for the program