CHAPTER 7

Kids 8–10: The “Cool” Factor

Hudson, Age 8

It doesn’t stop being magic just because you know how it works.

—Terry Pratchett

When kids reach age 8 or so, you start seeing a big shift in terms of cognition, confidence, and independence. They’re not little kids anymore, dependent on parents and teachers; in fact, in certain areas, they are more sophisticated than the adults in their lives. They’re starting to understand, accurately, the ramifications of their actions, and they realize that the world doesn’t end when they don’t play by the rules. This feeling is extremely liberating for the pre-‘tweens. You’ll see a resurgence in insecurity in the 10–12-year-olds, but the 8–10s are ready to take over the world. Look out.

Who Are They?

Children in the 8–10 range are pretty complex. They like being seen as the authorities on their favorite topics; they enjoy the “shock factor” that comes with really crazy, gross, or annoying things; and they are much less concerned about what others think of them than the 6–8s were. Table 7.1 highlights some of the 8–10 characteristics.

Getting Away with It

All this added confidence and knowledge can lead to a sense of invincibility among 8–10s. They’re not particularly afraid of anything online, since it’s an area they play in all the time and are inherently comfortable with. Couple this with an increased focus on identity awareness, and you’ve got a potentially dangerous situation on your hands. Kids as young as age 8 are accessing social media sites and apps and are being “friended” by folks they don’t know. As designers, for both kids and adults, we have increased responsibility to look out for our young users. This may be the most important aspect of designing for 8–10s.

Now let’s take a look at each of the characteristics in Table 7.1 and see what they mean when designing for 8–10-year-olds.

TABLE 7.1 CONSIDERATIONS FOR 8–10-YEAR-OLDS

8–10-year-olds…	This means that…	You’ll want to…
Like to be the experts.	They don’t read instructions; they just jump in and start doing.	Use post-failure messaging to teach instead of up-front directions.
Can take into account multiple aspects of a problem in order to solve it.	They like more complicated, challenging interfaces that require them to think.	Keep the level of complexity relatively high, but not impossible to figure out.
Can tell the difference between ads and actual content.	They’re starting to dislike and distrust ads. Ads that are too numerous/too big can cause them to abandon an experience.	Create a real visual separation between ads and content.
Are starting to realize that adults don’t have all the answers.	They feel more empowered to push back on rules, ideas, and directions.	Invite them to be silly. Provide opportunities for nuances instead of black-and-white rules.
Are confident enough with their interpersonal skills to be less frightened of strangers online.	They’re more open to chatting online with people they know and those they don’t.	Be very careful about how you introduce social elements. Even if they seem harmless, kids will find a way to get around them.
Have figured out that if they fib about themselves online, chances are no one will know.	They fib about their identity online, usually about age but sometimes about other stuff, too, just for the thrill of doing something illicit.	Put less emphasis on identity and more on self-expression and accomplishment. If you need age-gating, use parental opt-in to get demographic info.

Provide Instructions After Failure

“Failure” is probably not the right word to use here, but it’s how kids will see their initial attempts to master an interface. Unlike our 6–8s, our 8–10s don’t look for instructions before beginning, so they might not be completely successful the first time they use your design. While a 6-year-old probably won’t try something without adequate direction, a 9-year-old will size up the interface, determine if it’s worth his time, and jump right in. This presents a huge opportunity for teaching—after the kid fails the first time.

Using confirmation and error messages to provide incremental instruction is very powerful for this age group. And most kids’ sites aren’t doing this. Since children aren’t reading directions before starting, why not use follow-up messages to teach?

I did a research study several years ago for Pepperidge Farm’s Goldfish Fun site. The site does a great job of providing up-front instructions, but it misses a teaching opportunity with its follow-up messaging. The 9-year-olds I worked with opened the games and immediately started playing, ignoring the directions. When I asked about the directions, most of the answers included something like “Oh, this looks easy. I’ll just start playing,” or “I’m really good at these kinds of games.” When the kids didn’t perform as well as they’d liked on the games, some of them got discouraged and looked for help, while others gave up and moved on to different games altogether.

Eventually, kids gravitated to Goldfish Fun’s Catapult Chaos—a physics game that lets players control the angle and velocity of a virtual marble launched from a spoon to knock down a bunch of items (see Figure 7.1). Kids have to try and knock down as many of the items as they can.

FIGURE 7.1

Kids ignored the contextual help on Catapult Chaos and clicked the “Skip Tutorial Mode” button to start playing.

Catapult Chaos followed all the rules for designing for kids. Instead of a lengthy instruction screen, it presented contextual tips for mastering the game. It demonstrated how to play through animation. But the kids ignored all of this. They just wanted to play.

During the research sessions, one little boy played this game almost the entire time. In fact, the only way I was able to tear him away from the computer was to show him the American Express gift card I had for him to thank him for his participation. He kept tweaking the position of his spoon and the power of his marble launch repeatedly to see if he could achieve the Total Takedown Bonus, awarded when the player knocked down everything at once. His tweaks were mostly random, though, and his frustration increased whenever his score decreased. He clicked on the “Help” link, but the instructions there were too general to provide any real assistance (see Figure 7.2).

FIGURE 7.2

Catapult Chaos’s instructions are too general to provide help on how to improve your score.

No messages appeared during game play, and he didn’t see any type of confirmation except for a basic “nice job!” after he finished the level. He would have been able to increase both his knowledge and his score if messages were displayed periodically during the round, saying: “Try increasing your power meter this time!” or “What would happen if you tilted your spoon a little further down?” The goal here is not to provide a cheat or to minimize the exploratory aspects of the experience, but rather to set kids up for success in a meaningful way.

A team I worked with at Comcast designed an interface allowing customers with subscriptions to watch programs online. The first iteration of this system was really complicated, due to technical limitations and legal complications. Customers had to download and install two different pieces of software and log in three times. The team designed a really helpful set of instructions, but during usability testing learned that no one was reading it; rather, customers were waiting for context-based feedback to help them correct their mistakes. The team revised its approach and created a series of highly personalized “error” messages that essentially coached customers through the process. People were still frustrated, but the frustration was markedly less when the messages provided explicit information on how to recover and proceed.

Up the Complexity

Last year, I led the “Bring your kids to work day” activities at Comcast. I got to “teach” twenty-five 8–10-year-olds and their parents how to design apps. For the first part of the session, I interviewed the kids about their favorite apps. Most of these apps were games, and the games were of surprisingly high complexity, like Jelly Car, Doodle Jump, Plants vs. Zombies, Angry Birds, and Minecraft. The kids cited very few educational apps or apps that were designed specifically for kids. And when it came time for them to sketch out their ideas for new apps, the level of complexity they wanted to include was impressive. One 9-year-old (whose dad, it must be noted, is a brilliant software engineer) sketched an idea for a game that was a combination of Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies. It was basically impossible to play, given his explanation, and the kids were more excited about this than any of the other ideas presented.

This doesn’t mean that, as designers, we should create games and apps that exist only to be difficult. Rather, for our 8–10s, we should think about activities that require dexterity, skill, accomplishment, and the ability to improve over time. If the value proposition’s high enough, kids will be incredibly loyal players, at least until the next cool challenge comes along.

Let’s take a look at Pocket Frogs, an app that lets players discover, breed, collect, and trade frogs with other players.

Pocket Frogs is pretty complicated. You collect frogs, feed and care for them, and then breed them to create even rarer species. There are all kinds of rules around which frogs can be bred with other frogs (see Figure 7.3).

FIGURE 7.3

Pocket Frogs’ complex set of breeding rules appeals to 8–10-year-olds.

The great thing about Pocket Frogs is that the interface itself is pretty intuitive, but the rules are quite complex. There’s a whole currency system—including money, potions, and stamps—that users must figure out in order to buy stuff to keep their frogs happy. Players also have to learn which frogs are comparable in worth to other frogs in order to make reasonable trades. It’s a game that can take awhile to master, but provides the opportunity for immediate and ongoing reward. Some 8–10-year-olds like this. They’re not necessarily looking for a game or app that they can master right away. Younger kids love repetition and prefer to excel immediately at something that they can accomplish over and over again. When kids turn age 8 or so, they like games that provide more of a complex “journey,” where they can continue to learn, grow, and discover over time.

Ads Aren’t Content

Until kids reach age 5 or so, they’re unable to tell the difference between commercials and regular TV programming. This is a real problem for parents and educators, because it’s difficult to raise media-literate kids if they’re constantly targeted by advertisers without understanding why and what it’s all about. In 1992, the Children’s Television Act imposed rules around advertising for kids, mandating that among other things, commercials for licensed character toys should not be shown during the programs featuring the characters—so, GI Joe toy commercials can’t be shown during GI Joe cartoons. The rules have since become more stringent, and some channels featuring programming for very young children don’t permit commercials targeting kids to be shown at all during these shows.

Fortunately, guidelines around TV and online advertising for kids continue to evolve. CARU, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit, a U.S. organization with members across government, advertising, programming, and the private sector, publishes the Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children’s Advertising with information on complying with various government advertising and privacy rules. They also route consumer complaints to the proper government agencies.

Despite all these efforts, some unscrupulous advertisers/programmers still manage to get ads through. The good news, however, is that the 8–10s are pretty savvy when it comes to advertising. In fact, they’ll react negatively when they see an ad unit crop up in a content area. Good news, except if you rely on ads to keep your site or app afloat.

The answer? Well, it’s complicated. The best thing to do is to acknowledge the existence of ads within your experience and call them out clearly so that kids can ignore or process them as they see fit. Advertisers will want to be in compliance, so they’ll most likely agree to the visual treatment you place around their ad units.

The Campbell’s Soup Company’s kid sites do a good job calling out advertising. They use an indicator, called “Ad Nooze,” to identify the components of the site that are trying to sell instead of entertain (see Figure 7.4).

FIGURE 7.4

On the Goldfish Fun site, an “Ad Nooze” indicator tells kids that they’re looking at an ad.

Kids using the Goldfish Fun site understand that whenever they see the “Ad Nooze” indicator, they should put their savvy consumer hats on. Nickelodeon also pops up an indicator for ads, but theirs is much more subtle (see Figure 7.5)

FIGURE 7.5

Nick.com’s advertisement indicator is very small and blends into the background.

Nick.com is following CARU guidelines, but to the minimum. The word “ADVERTISEMENT” is pretty small, and a bit hard to read. Kids will figure out that this is an ad, but will be more likely to get annoyed that it’s interrupting their content experience. It’s best to clearly identify the ads within your interface, to meet user needs and be in compliance with government regulations.

“Poopyhead” Is a Perfectly Acceptable User Name

Kids learn, at around age 8, that adults don’t always have all the answers and can sometimes be—shockingly—wrong. Instead of tacitly acknowledging this and moving on, kids tend to exploit this by pushing back. They taunt the adults in their lives with curse words they learned in the playground, they scare younger siblings with dead bugs, and they break the rules they think are dumb. While it can be hard for parents to deal with these behaviors, as designers, we have a responsibility to encourage them and let these kids rule, at least within our environments. By permitting kids to break the rules within the experiences we design, we’re validating their intelligence and sophistication in the safe confines of a digital space.

Of course, you don’t want the interface you design to be a free-for-all. You want all your users to feel comfortable. As a result, you’ll want to curb the particularly outrageous behaviors while encouraging the silly, harmless ones.

A good way to do this is to give kids creative license when developing their online personas. If you let kids pick ridiculous user names (as long as these don’t include obscenities or personally identifiable information), they’ll feel as though they’ve trumped the system and pulled one over on the adults who are behind the experience. And they’ll feel a secret thrill every time they log in with the name “poopyhead.”

ROBLOX is a fantastic site where kids can create their own virtual worlds for other players to explore. They can build and program items within the world to have specific behaviors, to match their grandiose imaginations. In short, they can create a world in which anything is possible. And, while the name “poopyhead” is already taken, ROBLOX is quick to provide creative alternatives (see Figure 7.6).

FIGURE 7.6

ROBLOX lets kids be creative when picking user names.

Another great way to let kids be the authority is to support unconventional behaviors within your experience. While the 6–8s get really uncomfortable when rules are broken, they also love it. Why can’t the crazy zombie pop out of the tree trunk and scare the next-door neighbor? Or why can’t the cat sprout wings and land on the teacher’s head?

ROBLOX, although its interface is confusing, lets kids pretty much create and build any type of environment they want, with their own rules around behaviors, activities, and physics (see Figures 7.7 and 7.8). It is based on the concept of Constructionism, which maintains that kids learn concepts like logic, language, and math as they build things on their own.

FIGURE 7.7

Kids can build their own ROBLOX worlds.

FIGURE 7.8

Kids can add and delete items from their ROBLOX worlds.

Despite its overall awesomeness, ROBLOX is pretty hard to use across the board. It’s got a steep learning curve, despite the common icons and symbols it uses to communicate functionality. A typical 9-year-old will have a difficult time figuring out how to get started building stuff. I got confused simply trying to move items around on the screen, and somehow invoked the situation in Figure 7.9.

I do like how the system provides feedback on the user’s actions after she performs them. Although kids like to jump in, do stuff, and learn how to improve after failing, I’m not sure a 9-year-old would be able to understand what to do here. It would be great if the error messages in the ROBLOX code contained some teaching information, like “This means you need to close the builder menu before continuing.” Overall, though, the idea and spirit behind ROBLOX is exciting and inspiring. Letting kids build and explore their own environments supports how the 8–10s behave and allows them to be experts within their own domain.

FIGURE 7.9

I have no idea what this screen is telling me.

Of course, you may not have the ability, budget, or license to design a completely open system where kids can control the behavior of their characters or elements. However, you can incorporate some of these ideas on a smaller scale. Let them be silly, give them chances to run the show even in small bursts—for example, user names, avatars, and so on—and celebrate their unconventional behaviors and ideas.

A Matter of Trust

While the 6–8s are scared of people they don’t know, the 8–10s tend to be more gregarious and social, especially online. Since the Internet is a domain they know, better, possibly, than the adults in their lives, they’re pretty confident in their abilities to use it. This confidence includes communicating with people online. How can a device as trusted and well known as a computer or tablet hurt them in any way, especially given their expertise in the space? As a designer, you need to be aware of this, not just when designing kid sites, but when designing any site with a social component.

I did some research using the Club Penguin site about a year ago. One 8-year-old boy, who was uncharacteristically reluctant to communicate with other players, even using the canned chat mechanism, told me a story about how his sister, who was 10 at the time, gave the family phone number to a man she met online. The man called, their dad answered the phone, got the guy’s number and gave it to his brother who happened to be an FBI agent. Uncle FBI Agent came over the next day and scared the crap out of these kids about giving personal information out online. “If you talk to people online, they’ll find out where you live and come to your house and steal your stuff,” the kid told me.

Most of your users probably won’t have FBI agents in their family, but it’s still your responsibility (and legal obligation) to protect them online.

So how do you engage these outgoing, social, technologically confident kids in your designs? Carefully. Age-gating and parental consent aren’t enough, because, as you’ll see in a bit, these kids fib (aka outright lie). If you’re designing a site for kids, “social” should only be a component, an enhancement to your site’s main purpose. Kids will emphasize the social piece if they find the rest of the experience boring or “too babyish.” To them, being social online means being mature and grown-up. Those are the main value propositions of any social component for kids. So, if you make your experience itself feel “grown-up,” the social component will be less of an allure. To do this, you’ll want to make sure that your design isn’t patronizing or condescending, and you should use simple, plain language that doesn’t try too hard to sound cool.

Everloop is a site designed to give kids between 8 and 13 the “social network experience” within a safe, monitored, parentally controlled environment (see Figure 7.10). The concepts behind it are really strong. Kids can join various “loops” to communicate with like-minded people, and parents can control the level of engagement their kids can have, restricting IM usage and requesting notifications when their kids make new friends.

This is all very good. However, what the site’s design communicates is, “Hey kids, you’re too immature to use ‘real’ sites like Facebook, so here’s this lame, dumbed-down version with music and videos, because that’s what you kids like.”

FIGURE 7.10

Everloop’s goals are noble, but its design talks down to kids.

This site was clearly designed by well-meaning adults who believe they know what kids like and want. Using the phrase “Just for Us,” while communicating the value proposition of the site, will deter kids from engaging, since it’s so obviously targeting kids. Kids will gravitate toward the chat and networking functionality here since the self-referential games, goobs (pranks you can play on your friends), and videos are presented in a rather condescending way. Using a color scheme that’s similar to Facebook, and including functionality that’s similar to Facebook, merely reinforces the fact that this, in fact, is not Facebook, but rather a “lite” version. This is the kind of site that parents love and kids hate.

If the design focused more on what it offers instead of pushing the “for kids” angle, kids would be more excited to participate in the loops and features and less interested in the chatting and messaging components. And thus, they’d be less likely to chat with people they didn’t know, simply for the sake of doing so, and focus more on the common interests and elements that brought them together.

It’s OK to Lie if Nobody Gets Hurt

I remember the first time I saw a kid fib in a user-research session. Alyssa was 9, and we were looking at sites that required registration in order to play games. When filling out the registration form, Alyssa said she was 11, and that she lived in New Jersey, not Pennsylvania. These little fibs were minor, and would have no impact on the site Alyssa was trying to access. I asked her why she had lied. “Well,” she said, “It’s okay to lie if nobody gets hurt.” When I probed further, Alyssa explained that she really didn’t know why she had lied about her age and state, but she just “felt like it.”

This happens a lot. The idea of lying about who you are online and having nothing bad happen because of it is extremely powerful to these kids, who, for the most part, are honest and well meaning in their real-world interactions. There’s a certain thrill associated with saying you’re 11 when you’re really 9. This situation presents interesting implications for designers, even when designing experiences meant for adult audiences, because ultimately, you never really know who your users are.

Kids will mostly lie about who they are, not about what grade they’re in or what their interests are. They also tend to stay true to their gender, since that is such a key component of their identity. But things like age, location, and physical appearance are completely up for grabs.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Experimenting with these things in the context of the Internet lets kids explore concepts of identity in a relatively safe environment. Where they run into trouble is on sites like Facebook, where kids have to be at least 13 in order to participate. In this case, a little white lie can lead to unwanted interactions. There are rules and regulations for these types of environments, but it’s hard for site administrators to weed out everyone who may or may not be lying about their age, as this could be almost anyone. And since most sites’ Terms and Conditions and EULAs (end-user license agreements) are walls of text, few people, let alone kids, read them all the way through.

The best way to get around this is to emphasize the more interesting aspects of identity and downplay characteristics like age and location. Collecting demographic information is important when deciding what content to show to specific users, or for marketing purposes, but if you place less importance on this and more on the other components of a child’s identity, you’ll reduce the likelihood of harmless fibbing.

The Candystand site, geared toward kids ages 8 and up, has a pretty standard registration process (see Figure 7.11.)

FIGURE 7.11

Kids will probably lie about their age on the Candystand registration page.

Chances are, if kids are going to lie, they’ll put in an incorrect birthday here. The form is simple enough, but asks for just enough information to be annoying. Kids don’t understand why they have to register to use sites anyway, and if they feel like they’re being judged because of their age, or that they might not be able to use all site features if they’re too young, they’ll make up a birth date.

A better approach here would be to put the emphasis on the user name, since that’s where kids can be most creative. They can create a password and then do something fun, like pick their Zodiac sign, or click an image of what the weather’s like on their birthday. They can then select the year. Letting them be creative in other areas of the registration process will make them less likely to want to be creative in selecting their birth year or location. If you need a parent’s email address, make a space for them to enter it, but create some basic features of the site that they can use without parental consent. When they try to access an area that requires a parent’s approval, you can then prompt them for the email address. This breaks up the process while still setting them up for success. Which, ultimately, is your primary goal as experience designers.

Oh, and that Facebook module on the right? As we discussed earlier, Facebook’s Terms & Conditions mandate a minimum age of 13 in order to use their services. When you’re designing for kids, and your experience requires registration, don’t encourage them to sign in with a Facebook account. It doesn’t matter that some of them already have Facebook accounts. You’re encouraging them to violate the T&Cs, and that’s probably not a great idea. Build your own registration process. If kids are excited enough about what your site will let them do, they’ll register. And if you design wisely, they’ll even use real data.

FIGURE 7.12

DIY’s parental consent email helps parents understand the site’s purpose.

Chapter Checklist

As you’ve seen, designing for 8–10-year-olds is a completely different endeavor than designing for younger—and, as we’ll see in a moment, older—kids. When creating sites and apps for these children, make sure that you address the following information.

Now let’s take a look at the oldest age group, the 10–12-year-olds. As you’ll see, these guys are very complex and sophisticated, with highly developed cognitive skills, but they still need some special treatment when it comes to design.