Designing Websites for Today’s Kids

Designing websites for kids gives you plenty of opportunities for a unique designer. At one time, kids’ websites were brash and busy, and packed with colors and cartoons.In today’s world, the scale of the children’s market has changed dramatically and most websites aimed at children now follow principles that take into account kids’ newer and more modern perspectives.

Today, children become sophisticated consumers from a much earlier age. They are sensitive to age-targeting and even bias in website design, so it’s important that you don’t talk down to them. A designer’s best defense against patronizing youngsters is to get a few of them to comment on your design in the planning stage. Remember that there is a difference between remembering what it was like to be a kid and actually being a kid.

Stick To Plain Talk

Research-based guidelines say that adults like plain speaking just as much as kids do.Therefore, there’s little to be gained from excluding kids from a website by making the language or the layout or anything else more complex than necessary. Even at the most basic level, over-elaborate language and denser text will risk turning a website into a picture gallery, because the text and wider message are going to be lost when a child disengages from most of the content. More able or sophisticated readers are happy to read concise language, and they will seek further details when it’s required.

Gain Trust

Parents and children look for safe, reputable and secure websites where content is actively moderated and support is on hand. In particular, parents will appreciate a certain amount of hand-holding with accessible tutorials and a few walk throughs.One critical part in the hand-holding process is the sign-up process. Sign-ups are critical to the success of most websites and should always be trustworthy and convenient to use.

Interact

Interactive website features, such as forums, mini-games, ranking systems, polls,competitions and even 3-D interfaces, are valued by kids to build a sense of communityand foster participation. Bolting such features on won’t likely prove effective, though,because kids will soon see the gaps and re-evaluate the website, despite any initial interest.

Offer Choice

There are many ways to present children with choices through some thoughtful design.Using consultative polls, competitions, push-button style makeovers or even a lot of custom avatars are basic elements that should gel with the overall style and with any other interactivity on the website.

Web designers should also consider offering their own in-house or site-specific choices.Opening up choice this way involves looking at users’ workflow, and the motivations that underlie their use of the website.

Here are a few ways to create more choice:

Allow visitors to adjust the pace and frequency of interaction

Offer flexible or open-ended environments,

Vary the range of activities offered,

Help visitors construct and extend their own goals,

Offer multiple levels of hand-holding,

Enable the construction and deconstruction of sections of the user’s experience.

Among these options, the greatest choice comes with co-design, where children go beyond decorating avatars and completing polls to start to independently shape their own game play.

Kids enjoy novelty, and adults go to a lot of trouble to organize parties and outings that give them new ideas and novel experiences. A website aimed at kids does the same thing. Suppress the urge to start on screen and spend a more time in the planning stages. The rewards will be a much tighter fit between your design and the kids you designing for.

Cartoons are perhaps the most popular website style right now, but designers have a lot of options. Web designers with strong graphic design skills have a great and valuable weapon in their arsenal. Those who don’t have access to such skills might be at adisadvantage, but it’s surprising to see how much can be achieved with something as simple as a digital camera and some cheap software.

Today, you have lots of opportunities to design a creative and unique website for kids. The KEY is to take some time and design it from the kids’ perspective, in other words, think like a kid, and you’ll have the right perspective to take on today’s children’s market.