It amazes me how often apps built for toddlers make fundamental mistakes: interactions that little, fat 'starfishy' fingers can't manage; instructions in text rather than voice or picture.
Flash games are the worst for this: at least with an iOS game drag and drop is easy and intuitive for a toddler - but trying to drag and drop with a laggy mouse is hard. Toddler will accidentally scroll the containing browser window or switch apps, which is very distressing for them. A simple, locked full-screen browser would be a godsend for many parents (which is what an iPad is).
I have found young children cope fine with the one button. Once they learn not to touch it until they are finished they are fine - if they accidentally push it they know what happened.
It's also great to see quality, intelligent software appearing for small children: Balloonimals is a constant favourite, Ramp Champ should be rebranded for the under-5s as it has just enough gameplay for them.
Something interesting: as my kids (6 & 8) have grown up playing iPhone games with tilt control they get very frustrated when they play games with button-only control. They naturally try to tilt the device. It shows that the next generation of gamers have no need for physical buttons - something that we were told was essential for gamers.
I've been meaning to write a blog post about this subject for years.
You might be interested in this behind the scenes recap of the making of one of the Sesame Street iPad apps (it focused on the technical porting challenges)
Agree. For online, check out http://www.babyfirsttv.com/babyu -- it's the best I've come across so far. It uses just the space bar and enter keys and the windows easily work at any size. The downside is a bunch of their games are broken, though they are pretty responsive about fixing.
Motion controls and button controls are not mutually exclusive. And buttons are essential for games that require more precise controls, in the same way that a physical keyboard is essential for writing long texts.
Having watched my children I must respectfully disagree. You need buttons because your hands are now wired that way. My little boys are happier with the sensitivity of a tilt. They were never wired to buttons.
It's pretty obvious that iPhone games designed to be controlled by tilt work well with tilt, it's not at all obvious that other genres of games work well with pure tilt controls.
It's also a bit premature to draw conclusions from kids at an age where their fine motor skills are still developing. They could be getting frustrated because pushing buttons is hard for them.
I would add the additional thing that if you have a big green button and a big red button, the toddler is not going to have the same good/bad stop/go associations with those colours. A big red 'exit the app and go spend money' button is going to get pushed just as much as the 'go back to the game green button'.
From the article:
"Finally, here are some gripes with iOS:
•Home button needs an off switch. I need some way to disable the home button or make it harder to access during app play, e.g. a triple click or some other morse code sequence.
•Need a way to hide videos. Eli knows how to get to the videos. He can find the icon no matter where I put it. I can disable videos through restrictions, but that doesn't really solve the problem. I would really like to be able to hide this icon like you can do for system icons on Windows. Another option would be to put the restriction on the icon itself and force me to enter the password when clicking on it. Come to think of it, this would work for the home button too.
"
I very much disagree with the first point. It makes your app a 'trap' that even an adult might not be able to figure out how to exit from. This is a stunningly, spectacularly bad idea and violates the whole "the user is in control" illusion. If the easiest way to exit your app is to reboot the machine ... then your app blows, and you suck.
If the kid is pressing the home button a lot, and this annoys you, then you have to think about your goals. Toddlers like to bounce from one thing to another a lot, and they love to be in control (because they have so little control of everything else in their lives).
We think of toddlers having short attention spans, but sometimes the converse is true, toddlers can also have amazingly long attention spans - the classic example being the kid who sits there and bangs a pot with a wooden spoon for endless hours.
If the toddler is exiting too often from the app, maybe the problem is not with the home button, maybe your app is just not engaging enough.
I saw (for instance) one toddler who could spend hours making the angry birds fly the wrong way. When they do they make indignant squawks, and he loved that. Without fail any adult who watched him doing that would quickly become bored and try to show him how to 'do it right'.
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With respect to the videos, I'm not sure what the problem is, is it bandwidth? Is it easy access to age inappropriate content?
> I saw (for instance) one toddler who could spend hours making the angry birds fly the wrong way.
My two-year-old does the same thing. He loves the sounds the birds make, but he gets very upset when the pigs "fall down," so he'll throw the all of the birds the wrong way, go back to the main screen, choose the next level (that I've already unlocked), and fling all of those birds the wrong way too.
Rovio should come out with a toddler-focused game that just lets the user fling an unlimited number of birds into random targets. I'd buy it.
I wasn't talking about a dev-switch, but a system wide switch for the home button. The issue is not messing with the toddler attention span, but the slow-loading apps. With the toddler in control, they often won't wait until the app loads or they'll hit the home button if it becomes shortly unresponsive, and then they'll go right back into the same app. Yes, this is an app problem that should be solved, but in absence of those developers solving it, I would like to bypass them with my own fix.
Wrt to videos, left to own devices, the toddler will often just watch videos, and I'd rather them interact with the apps when it is not video time. When the icon is not there/found, that works fine.
"Wrt to videos, left to own devices, the toddler will often just watch videos, and I'd rather them interact with the apps when it is not video time. When the icon is not there/found, that works fine.
"
Ok, thanks. I haven't had videos loaded on the iPad, so this hasn't come up during my field testing.
Maybe there's a niche to make toddler videos? Actually, I think there is something much more subtle and fundamental going on here that I will need to think about. When they are driving the app, the toddler is very 'switched on' and they want everything to be clickable and interactable... yet according to what you're saying they switch over into a totally passive mode when watching videos. Fascinating, but begs the question "now that I know that, what do I do?" :D
The home button does need an off switch. Your objects are nothing some good design couldn't solve. For example, allow parents to explicitly enable toddler mode for specific apps in settings. Also, allow multiple versions of exiting toddler mode -- requiring press and hold for one second would avoid inadvertent exiting like my son has a tendency to do, while press and hold and password would mean that you can effectively lock your iphone so your toddler can't make phone calls / delete email.
I got my son an ipod touch when he was about 18 months old so he could watch movies on long car rides. All the points mentioned are dead on from my perspective. I'd also add two points:
- don't rely on audio instructions. a parent noticing that a toddler is getting frustrated may not have heard the "pick the thing with the same initial sound" instruction. Put the text on the screen.
- the best upsell is more content. Toddler Teasers Shapes does this really well. They built a complete and engaging game, and offer upsells of more content like colors and letters in the same game format.
Actually, toddler teasers does the whole experience really well. The splash screen has text "triple click to access settings" and only one big button at the bottom that says "play". The additional content is accessed through the settings screen.
For the home button problem - I think a solution would be a system-wide toggle for alternate home button behavior. I actually wouldn't mind a setting where the home button switches single and double-click modes in-app, so that single-clicking while in an app brings up the switcher, double-clicking exiting to the home screen.
Mis-timing or missing a double-click to adjust the brightness or pause/adjust background music exiting causing the exit to completely exit can be annoying at times, and I'm not even a toddler :)
I'd really love a version of the iOS YouTube app that would let me limit it to specific users and/or playlists I've created.
My two-year-old twins love watching Sesame Street videos, but this afternoon they managed to pull up a woman in underwear talking about sex off the 'most popular' tab.
My daughter can play with an iPad when she can go to the store on her own and buy one.
iPad apps and other forms of educational software, DVDs, CD-ROMs, electronic, interactive toys are all just bullshit paraphrenalia that pile up in the garage.
Babies need interaction with humans, and real world objects. Toddler apps on the iPad are poison.
That's an interesting point of view. What led you to that perspective?
As for our kids, we found that the TV is amazingly effective at teaching them, notably for reading skills. That catchy "The B says 'Buh'" song (and its 25 friends) was something that totally helped them remember how to sound out words. Our eight year old reads like a demon now, and the five year old is a beginning reader (he started slower than his older brother, but he's doing fine). The current three year old is recognizing letters and clearly interested in reading on her own.
It's not like we don't read to them or teach them, too--but it's quite obvious to us that the TV is scarily effective at getting messages across. If you think about it, that's what it's designed to do. We just choose to use it primarily for good and limit the undesirable effects.
Oh, and you should totally see my daughter figure out tangram puzzles on the iphone/ipod. She rocks at it. Yeah, they like to do stuff that's not challenging, too (come to think of it, I do too sometimes!). But I'm the parent: I get a say into how this stuff is used, and I'm going to use every tool that I can.
For me, it comes down to a matter of needs. I was reading and writing before I went to school and it wasn't the result of educational software (actually my parents used the Glenn Doman method). So I don't need educational software or toys - I can teach my child reading, writing, speaking and basic maths on my own.
This extends quite naturally to conversations about sugar and, later on, alcohol. Children don't need sugary foods and sweets, there is absolutely no advantage in them, so why would I feed them to my child? When she's old enough to want a mobile phone because all the other kids have them and they're cool, the question is "why do you need a mobile phone?". Just because everyone else has them is not an acceptable reason.
Computers are designed to be learned, and it's easy to learn how to use a computer (especially something that's basically designed for the "normals" like the iPad). Hell when computers first came out plenty of non-technical professionals learned to use them in a very short period of time. I don't think there's any advantage, educational or otherwise, in exposing my daughter to that type of technology early on, so why would I? Simply because it's there?
I harbour certain reservations to do with development of imagination and fostering an early screen addiction (just the same as I'm concerned about sugar and alcohol addiction) that come into play here - but those aren't things that I can point at and conclusively say "if my daughter uses this, she'll be an obese xbox obsessed couch potato", but the reasoning of minimalist parenting and focusing on needs rather than wants I think builds a healthier child.
I just don't buy into the "I didn't need X, so I will not provide X" argument. It is clear that toddler iphone apps are not required for learning. That doesn't mean they aren't good at what they do. And, even if they're merely neutral w/r/t learning, the kids demonstrably love playing with them.
The "love playing with them" seems to apply to sweets too. Kids love sweets. I love sweets. They're not the healthy part of the diet, but that's why they're intake-limited, not unmetered.
Mobile phones are useful too. When I was a kid, I was terrible about phoning home to let them know whose house I was playing at. Knowing that a kid has a mobile phone that you can reach them on is awesome. The other (cool?) stuff can just be a fringe perk for the kid.
So, I dunno. The alternative to minimalism isn't maximalism. Things like access to highly-attractive, disproportionately rewarding relative to their merits activities can be rationed. But I just don't see not letting a kid play with things that they think are awesome just because if they were to overdo it makes it harmful.
Indeed, the concept of self-metering is huge. I've never seen kids explode quite so spectacularly as when they are released from a restrictive regime into an environment where they have not learned the habits of self control.
I was recently thinking about how humans need to learn software based interactions, simply because on-screen elements generally aren't based on the physical properties we are around all day. Unless emulation of these properties are done perfectly, it will feel 'off'.
Is it a problem? Well, I didn't think so, but that was before I realized how young children these days are interacting with computing systems.
I feel as though software based applications should only be used by children as a 'treat'. As you say, children need to spend most their time interacting with the world and humans.
They spend almost all of their time interacting with humans and physical objects. What's wrong with allowing them to enjoy discovering how smartphones work?
This article apply to all apps, not just toddler apps. As Jack Dorsey of Twitter said not too long ago, making things that are very simple turns out to be very difficult.
Simple interfaces with big buttons, modal dialogs always fixed position in the middle of the screen, and bold colors are the future.
I was "experimenting" with my little daughter (now 21 months).
The best toddler friendly games that I know is http://www.fungooms.com with a toddler you need to "copilot" with the mouse/touch but if these kind of games goes to a touchscreen they will be a big success.
Other recomendation is using webcam games to recognize the toddler movement.
My first iOS app back in 2008 was made for my young kids. A few of the key design points that went into it:
* Design for right-to-left action, so that when kids tap the screen with the pointer finger of their (most likely) right hand, the rest of their hand doesn't hide the screen. I'm still not sure why so many apps are built left-to-right...
* There are no popups, menus or screens changes for kids to get lost in. Anywhere they can touch the screen, something fun happens.
* Settings are hidden away in the lame phone-wide settings, so that kids don't land in there by accident.
Bought. :) my boys might be getting a little old for it but I have plenty of other kids who like to play with my iPhone. (I think handing your iPhone to a bored kid is one of life's simple pleasures - I recommend it to everyone (who has an insured iPhone))
Agreed, but even better would be a way to limit users to a certain folder or screen. I keep all the kid-friendly apps on one screen, but inevitably they go exploring. I'm always worried that they'll send gobbledygook to an email, or a status update on twitter or facebook. It'd be great to separate these apps.
For that matter, it's too easy to swipe to another screen. My youngest finds the app he wants, but he'll try 4-5 times to click the icon, and end up partially swiping to another screen.
It's also too easy to go into edit mode. My oldest has figured ou that when it goes all wiggly, to press the home button, but my youngest just gets frustrated that he can't start a wiggling app.
the biggest feature i think ios needs based on my 4 year old nephew using my ipad? the ability to log out of the app store. there is no way to do it. you have to wait a certain amount of time.
One related question that I was just thinking about this weekend was if people have similar purchasing habits for toddler/child apps compared to apps for themselves.
1) toddlers and up just instantly get simple touch screen UIs. They are way more intuitive for them.
2) Free apps for small children that have adverts are a daft idea. Way too many fat-fingered mis-presses by children (unless that is the idea....)
My two-year-old asks every day to play Angry Birds. He's terrible at it (in the traditional sense), but he spends lots of time flinging the birds off in the wrong direction.
It amazes me how often apps built for toddlers make fundamental mistakes: interactions that little, fat 'starfishy' fingers can't manage; instructions in text rather than voice or picture.
Flash games are the worst for this: at least with an iOS game drag and drop is easy and intuitive for a toddler - but trying to drag and drop with a laggy mouse is hard. Toddler will accidentally scroll the containing browser window or switch apps, which is very distressing for them. A simple, locked full-screen browser would be a godsend for many parents (which is what an iPad is).
I have found young children cope fine with the one button. Once they learn not to touch it until they are finished they are fine - if they accidentally push it they know what happened.
It's also great to see quality, intelligent software appearing for small children: Balloonimals is a constant favourite, Ramp Champ should be rebranded for the under-5s as it has just enough gameplay for them.
Something interesting: as my kids (6 & 8) have grown up playing iPhone games with tilt control they get very frustrated when they play games with button-only control. They naturally try to tilt the device. It shows that the next generation of gamers have no need for physical buttons - something that we were told was essential for gamers.
I've been meaning to write a blog post about this subject for years.