User Experience for Children

The best way to design successful children’s products is to research and test them with real children.  Adult designers will be able to see their product from a child's perspective, and understand how to make it engaging and interesting.

We are experienced in adapting usability techniques and interpreting results for children from toddlers to teens.

Benefits

• Find out what is important to real children in their own environment and language
• Ensure your product can be used by children in your target age group
• Use children’s creativity to help improve your ideas.

Our approach

• Techniques adapted to suit the age and abilities of the children
• Sessions are varied, interactive and fun
• If testing in the lab, the environment is friendly, welcoming and age appropriate
• Experienced, flexible facilitators with lots of ideas and alternative approaches
• Age appropriate communication tools including analysis of non-verbal communication.

Typical projects

Here are some examples of our work with children:

• Investigating friendship patterns, use of technology and ideas for future designs in 7 to 11 year olds for a leading mobile phone manufacturer
• Accessibility testing with children aged 3-14, including those with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities for CBBC and CBeebies
• Eight stages of research for the CBBC team to support the CBBC rebuild.  Research stages included focus groups, ethnographic research, in the wild testing, user testing and interviews
• Listening labs and cultural probes with children aged 11-14 years for the Key Stage 3 Bitesize website
• User testing with children and teachers in the lab and in schools for the BBC Primary History website
• Ongoing usability support and testing with KS2 children for the BBC Primary Languages website
• Two phases of user testing and ethnographic research with children aged 7-12 for the Newsround team
• Accessibility testing with children aged 5-14 for the BBC Digital Curriculum project
• Accessibility testing of the new Something Special website with children aged 2-6 with moderate or severe disabilities

What do our clients say?

System Concepts did an exceptional job helping us better understand the needs and motivations of children.  The team thoughtfully designed games and activities to ensure that the children were having fun and never bored.  Not only did the children enjoy their time with the team, one child said they were having such a good time they didn’t want to leave!  The final deliverables that we received were clear, insightful and to the point, allowing us to apply the results directly to our project.  We are happy to recommend System Concepts for any research involving children in the future.

Sunny Yang and Dokshin Lim (Samsung Design Europe).

Other pages you might find useful

• Read our article Usability Testing through the Eyes of a Child

For more information on any of our services, please contact us