skip to main content
10.1145/1139073.1139098acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesidcConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Initial observations on children and online instructions

Published: 07 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

When children use a computer, they often need instructions for how to proceed. However, giving instructions in the user interface is challenging: young children do not know how to read, or the instructions might be in a language they do not master. We describe three small scale usability studies where the amount and method of advice giving in the interface varied. Our results show that children manage to use properly designed software with no instructions at all. Some usability test protocols emphasize giving children spoken instructions to help them get started. In our case studies we report two kinds of adult presence in the group for providing the spoken instructions, and the mixed findings of the role of the adult.

References

[1]
Als, B. S., Jensen, J. J. and Skov, M. B. Comparison of think-aloud and constructive interaction in usability testing with children. Proceedings of the 4th Int. Conf. on Interaction Design and Children IDC 2005, Boulder, Colorado, 5--16.
[2]
Baker, M., Cohen, J. L. and Moeller, B. KidCode: Using email to structure interactions for elementary mathematics instructions. Proceedings of the 2nd Int. Conf. on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning CSCL 1997, 1--9.
[3]
Boohbah. Available as http://www.boohbah.com.
[4]
Bruckman, A. and Bandlow, A. Human-computer interaction for kids. J. A. Jacko and A. Sears (eds.), The Human Computer Interaction Handbook. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003, 428--440.
[5]
Furon, E. Poisson Rouge Interactica, personal communication, 2004.
[6]
Hanna, L., Risden, K. and Alexander, K. J. Guidelines for usability testing with children. Interactions 4 (5) (1997), 9--14.
[7]
Hourcade, J. P., Bederson, B. B. and Druin, A. Building KidPad: an application for children's collaborative storytelling. Software: Practice & Experience 34 (9), 2003, 895--914.
[8]
Höysniemi, J., Hämäläinen, P. and Turkki, L. (2003) Using peer tutoring in evaluating the usability of a physically interactive computer game with children. Interacting with Computers 15 (2), April 2003, 205--225.
[9]
KidPad. Available as http://www.kidpad.org.
[10]
Koivisto, M. and Mustonen, L. Alman ja Olivian esikoulu (Alma's and Olivia's Preschool), prototype built and usability tested as part of course requirements http://www.cs.uta.fi/ipoppla/www/ipoppla02/komu/.
[11]
Kähkönen, M. Käytönaikaiset ohjeet esikouluikäisten lasten käyttöliittymissä (Online instructions in user interfaces for preschool children). M.Sc. thesis, University of Tampere, December 2005. In Finnish.
[12]
Norman, D. Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1990.
[13]
Poisson Rouge. Available as http://www.poissonrouge.com.
[14]
Sommers-Piiroinen, J., Kangassalo, M. and Hietala, P. Small researchers and innovative technology in preschool. Proceedings of the 13th Annual EECERA Conference, Glasgow, 3--6 September 2003.

Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Evaluating the Use of Visual Prompts in Online Meeting Applications for KindergartenersHCI in Games: Serious and Immersive Games10.1007/978-3-030-77414-1_17(229-244)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2021
  • (2020)Learning Through Exploration: How Children, Adults, and Older Adults Interact with a New Feature-Rich ApplicationProceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3313831.3376414(1-14)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2020
  • (2019)Physical dimensions of children's touchscreen interactionsInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.02.005128:C(1-16)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
IDC '06: Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Interaction design and children
June 2006
172 pages
ISBN:9781450378086
DOI:10.1145/1139073
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 June 2006

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. children
  2. instructions
  3. online help
  4. usability testing

Qualifiers

  • Article

Conference

IDC06

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)10
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 17 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Evaluating the Use of Visual Prompts in Online Meeting Applications for KindergartenersHCI in Games: Serious and Immersive Games10.1007/978-3-030-77414-1_17(229-244)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2021
  • (2020)Learning Through Exploration: How Children, Adults, and Older Adults Interact with a New Feature-Rich ApplicationProceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3313831.3376414(1-14)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2020
  • (2019)Physical dimensions of children's touchscreen interactionsInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.02.005128:C(1-16)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
  • (2017)Multi-touch gestures in multimodal systems interaction among preschool children2017 6th International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics (ICEEI)10.1109/ICEEI.2017.8312436(1-6)Online publication date: Nov-2017
  • (2014)Exploring Visual Cues for Intuitive Communicability of Touch Gestures to Pre-kindergarten ChildrenProceedings of the Ninth ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces10.1145/2669485.2669523(159-162)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2014
  • (2010)Touch-screen technology for childrenProceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/1810543.1810580(238-241)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2010
  • (2007)Designing spoken instructions with preschool childrenProceedings of the 6th international conference on Interaction design and children10.1145/1297277.1297304(133-136)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2007

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media