INTRODUCTION

My interest in children’s media started many years ago in college when I took a course on kids’ television from the brilliant Patricia Aufderheide. A mother of young children at the time, Dr. Aufderheide combined real-world examples with principles of cognitive psychology to demonstrate how exciting, rewarding, and difficult it is to create meaningful media for little ones. Through her teaching, I learned about the importance of visual literacy—helping kids understand how design techniques can be used to inform, sell, manipulate, and educate—and realized that, while there were a few gems out there, most of the television programs for kids were little more than veiled product advertisements. Children’s television was deregulated in the mid 1980s, and much of the high-quality kids programming developed before that time gave way to commercials disguised as animated half-hour shows.¹ My interest in the medium grew, and I envisioned myself writing for shows like Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow.

Then the Internet came along. I went to grad school. I became familiar with educational technology pioneers like Seymour Papert, Brenda Laurel, and Sherry Turkle, and got to study with the amazing Amy Bruckman. I learned that while the Internet opened all kinds of doors to better kids’ media, we still had a long way to go.

I got a job designing kids’ websites. I worked with brands like Crayola, Scholastic, PBS, Comcast, Campbells’ Soup Company, and Pepperidge Farm. I got to work with hundreds of kids. And I got to design for kids as though they were kids, not just small adults capable of deductive reasoning, abstract thought, and logical progression.

When my daughter was about 2, I began taking a closer and more critical look at kids’ media. The iPhone was a few years old at the time, and the possibility of using this device to teach and entertain was especially appealing, because it didn’t require a keyboard, a mouse, or highly developed fine motor skills. I looked for tips and techniques on how to design apps for kids and found some interesting articles, but no single comprehensive resource on designing compelling digital products for children of different ages. So I put together a quick elevator pitch and approached Lou Rosenfeld. That conversation led to this book.

When I started writing this book, I intended for it to be a primer on how to design for kids. But as it began to unfold, I realized that many of the techniques we use when designing for children can also be used to design great experiences for users of all ages. I hope that this book will be of value to you and that the information you find here will help you become a better designer, regardless of whom you design for.

Debra Levin Gelman

May 13, 2014

Philadelphia, PA