Building Products for the Youngest of Users
As the BANKI team builds out their proposition for 7–15 year old children, getting closer to the intended user group has been a core part of product iteration. I recently wrote about the learnings from that workshop but wanted to reflect on some of the higher level thinking involved when sitting down with children to conduct user testing.
They’re honest, playful and have a very short attention span. Their intuition drives them, and they often shift focus quickly.
Plan to Unplan
You really don’t want to go into a children’s user testing workshop not feeling fully prepared, however a minute by minute workflow will not work. You’l find it’s incredibly hard to keep on time with each section taking a little longer than expected. The workshop needs to feel fluid or you’ll not get the best out of the children and added pressure to complete exercises might skew some of the results.
Be the Fly on the Wall
Because children are so different to adults it might be worth trying an ethnographic research approach to user testing. Ethnographic research is a qualitative method where researchers observe and/or interact with participants in their real-life environment. So its best to observe from a far and within the home or school setting. Their playfulness is hard to capture with more structured research methods and you really want to collect as much data within their normal setting.
Parental Consent
This might be obvious to some but worth reiterating. User testing participants under the age of 18 require parent or teacher consent. If you want to also record any of the user testing for further analysis later you’ll also need to request consent. That’s preferred but not a roadblock, just make sure you have someone in the workshop transcribing any comments, keywords from the answers the children give.
Think Aloud
Another common way of involving children’s feedback and thoughts into the design process is by doing ‘think aloud’ sessions. Essentially you ask participants to use the product while continuously thinking out loud — that is, simply verbalising their thoughts as they move through the user interface. Children do this anyway so it’s very easy for you to facilitate.
Let the children play with the interface and probe them along the way if you want them to test something specific (e.g. “Try to use X feature on this page”). It’s also a good idea to have them test the interface twice, mainly because they are so fast and spontaneous in the way they interact. Testing twice gave me a chance to observe in more detail.
Final thoughts: User testing with children is more art than science. The workshop has to feel fluid and allow for flexibility. But most of all, immerse yourself in the why and how of child usability. Watching how they interact with your product will only prompt you to look with a different perspective, creating a more engaging user proposition.
