Designing for Preschoolers
For children in the age group 3 to 10 years, designing is a challenge. There is rapid brain development till the age of 5. From the age of 8 till early 20s again there is major and rapid brain development. There is physical as well as cognitive development of the brain structures. All these lead to various ability formations.
Every children has to achieve the developmental milestones for each age group. 3 to 5 years is also categorized as the preschoolers’ age group. By this time skills such as naming colors, showing affection, and hopping on one foot are met. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age. Children reach milestones in how they play, learn, speak, behave, and move (like crawling, walking, or jumping).
As children grow into early childhood, they open up to new experiences in the world. They will become more independent and begin to focus more on adults and children outside of the family. They will want to explore and ask about the things around them even more. Their interactions with family and those around them will help to shape their personality and their own ways of thinking and moving. During this stage, children should be able to ride a tricycle, use safety scissors, notice a difference between girls and boys, help to dress and undress themselves, play with other children, recall part of a story, and sing a song.
So, for designing any product for children, the age group is a must to be kept in mind as there are age related appropriate developments. The products and tools should be designed in keeping their physical development and also it has to be ensured that there is no barrier to their emotional and cognitive development skills. The user interface should be on the same page with the skills of the child and if possible it should be able to maximize and build on their existing skills.
So, for example, physical developments of children in the age group of 3 to 5 are like: For them designing interfaces that requires swiping and tapping will be great benefit for them to use. It will be in their usability capacity. It has to be noted that children at this age group do not have the muscle group developed for using devices like keyboards and mouse.
For children in the age group of 6 to 8, simple clicks and keystrokes should be used as thy are comfortable using it and are still becoming familiar with the PC. It was found in a study that dragging with the mouse was still difficult for children of this age group. On the other hand, children who are in the age group of 9 and older, can generally handle games which require 2 handed use. They are comfortable with dragging and scrolling.
Not only the physical capacities are to be taken into consideration, the cognitive capacities also has to be taken into consideration. The content of the product should match the cognitive level of the children. Advanced and ambiguous content will confuse these younger kids. On the contrary, older kids would find easy content to be monotonous and engagement with the product will decline.
There are various children’s mental model and skeumorphic designs should be used to reduce the mental load of the users. Example: using auto correction and partial matching during search can prevent error and frustrations when the children are trying to figure things out.
Lastly, keeping in mind the developmental psychology and physiology of children while designing any product for children which ensure impactful and useful product. Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why human beings change over the course of their life. It was originally concerned with infants and children, but later the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan.
