It’s no secret that smartphones have become ubiquitous ever since that iPhone’s fateful launch in 2007. Now that so many of us carry one with us daily, smartphone use has start to bleed down to younger and younger generations. In 2023, Finder reported that around 37% of children under 12 already owned their own phone, with that figure up from 28% just five years earlier. Combined with ACMAs 2020 estimate that 46% of children 13 and under have access to a mobile phone, it becomes clear that smartphone use among children is only going to grow. With young users growing to become a solid market for smartphone apps, if you’re gearing your offerings towards children, you’re going to need to cater the user experience (UX) design of your app towards them.
What apps are families & children using?
Children generally use their phones differently than adults. While adults use theirs more as tools, young kids especially want more of a creative outlet or entertainment. The types of apps that kids tend to use are:
- Mobile games. If there’s one certainty in this world, it’s that kids love games. And this is no different in the digital world. There are many games that are aimed directly at kids, using franchises popular with kids to add to the appeal.
- Entertainment apps. Entertainment apps also find themselves popular with kids. This can be anything from reading books to listening to podcasts or watching video content. Some providers, such as YouTube, also offer solutions aimed at kids. These ‘kids versions’ provide parents peace-of-mind while letting kids experience what the platform has to offer.
- Leaning and educational apps. This one may be more popular with parents than something kids are yearning for. But, parents are increasingly looking at how technology can improve children’s learning. These apps often aimed at much younger kids and aim to teach them basic principles, skills or knowledge. This is often put to the backdrop of a theme or franchise popular with the target audience as to increase enjoyment.
- Communication apps. As we move further into a digital age, so does our communication. While younger kids may focus on in-person interactions, older children can start to build communication skills in digital spaces too. Some providers, such as Messenger, also offer a version of their apps for kids, keeping parents in control and allowing kids to use and explore the new space safely.
Now we know what types of apps kids generally use, let’s have a look at how we can design for them.
How can you effectively design the UX of children’s apps?
1. Know your audience and their capabilities
Children are still growing and learning, so you can’t always make the same assumptions around capabilities as you can with adults. This becomes more and more important the younger the age group you are targeting. For very young children, use colours, shapes and symbols to convey information instead of relying on text. The same goes for concepts or ideas; ensure what you put in your app is relevant and understandable by your target audience, and doesn’t have any unnecessary complexity.
A good example of an app that does this well is Learn with Homer (no relation to The Simpsons). The one thing you won’t see is an over-reliance on text throughout the app, instead focusing on colours, shapes, items and symbols. This allows kids to build pattern recognition and association, which is often important for young kids to develop first.
2. Create a playful and fun aesthetic
For children, life is all about fun. Sure, while adults tend to prefer simpler apps centred around utility rather than entertainment, the same is not true for children. Young users generally enjoy bright colours, engaging visuals, fun animations and strong feedback from digital interactions. That last point is especially important: a large part of holdings kids’ attention is having strong interactive elements that constantly give them clear feedback.
Khan Academy Kids is an app that has used this principle to heighten education.
Their goal was to create an experience for very young kids that could keep them engaged. To achieve this, they wove education and playfulness together to create an experience that kids enjoyed, but also one that helped them learn.
3. Tailor your features to support their learning
You can find many do-s and don’t-s out there for what features you put in apps targetted at children. It’s important to ensure that features are transparent, meaningful and safe for children to use. Make sure your features support their learning and growth instead of acting as an addiction machine. It is crucial at this early stage of their lives that they are supported properly, and not targetted by harmful practices or features that may entrench dangerous or destructive behaviours.
A popular app that does this well is Reading Eggs. This app has tailored its offerings by using research to determine how best to support children’s learning. Their commitment to this is evidenced by the fact it has steered well away from potentially harmful practices in advertising and marketing, have committed to the Google Play for Families Policy and has earned itself the KidSAFE+ COPPA Certified Seal.
These aspects show Reading Eggs has taken their goal of providing a great learning experience for young kids seriously, and are committed to providing a safe space for kids.
4. Bring in the Whole Family
While sometimes it can be good to give children some independent time to use technology, it’s important to give them space to enjoy the digital world with their family. If left to themselves with technology for too long, it can be easy for them to develop bad habits. By instead focusing your apps around the whole family, it provides a healthier experience by maintaining social aspects of life.
A great example of this is how Nintendo has developed and positioned the Nintendo Switch. While there are single player experiences aimed at kids, popular hits like Mario Kart provide an whole-family experience. Whether playing with family or friends, these social games provide entertainment for kids in much-desired digital form, but keeps them grounded in the life around them and provides ways for them to grow their social skills.
In our technology-centred world, it is increasingly important to make sure our next generations have the social skills they need.
5. Give parents the final say
When you advertise your app, you are as much doing so to parents as you are to children. Ultimately, it’ll be up to caregivers to sign off on anything before they give it to their children. Parents need a way to monitor what their child does on the app, alongside other parental controls, especially if their kids are communicating with others online. Take special consideration to features that could be in any way harmful to children, even if they weren’t designed that way. While you can assume what might be harmful or not, give parents the final say on whether they want their child exposed to it.
In 2015, Google identified that YouTube was a brilliant platform for kids to access useful and educational content, however their access to the entirety of YouTube proved a dangerous idea.
In response, they launched YouTube Kids: a way to give parents control over what their kids can watch. A core aspect of YouTube Kids is parental controls, letting parents choose how strict or loose they want to be. You can restrict them to only watching approved videos, let them explore videos YouTube deems safe, or somewhere in-between. This provides parents with great control over keeping their kids safe. Even if all features won’t be used by all parents, having them available gives peace of mind and a sense of control to parents, making them happier to give their kids access to YouTube.
Bonus: Test, test, test
It’s often easy to slip into a mindset of thinking you know what makes effective UX design for children’s apps. However, unless you test with your target audience, you won’t know how well you are achieving this and you might be in for a shock when release time rolls around. Testing with children can be difficult from many perspectives, but it’s worth your time to develop some child-friendly testing methods. These methods will allow you to properly integrate kids into the UX design process - something that is crucial if you want to improve your app design.
Testing with young audiences isn’t always easy though as there are a lot of different factors to consider and accommodate that you won’t have to do with adult testers.
A good way to accomplish this is to bring in a company that specialises in app or game testing for children, like PlaytestCloud. That way, they can manage the process for you and you can focus on the teachings from the sessions.
If you go down the path of organising and running these sessions yourself, make sure you adhere to all regulations in your area. You also need to be careful when crafting the sessions themselves: it can be a great idea to bring those with expertise into the process to guide you through it. At the end of the day, the safety of the kids you test with is paramount, and nothing should come before that.
Closing Thoughts
Designing UX for children’s apps isn’t always simple. There are many things you need to take into consideration that differ to how you design most other apps, so make sure you take the time to get things right. There are so many great digital experiences out there for kids, and yours could be next to join them, but without proper care and consideration, it could also end up as one of the worst. So if there’s one thing you take away from this: be considerate, kind and careful, but also have fun!