British Heart Foundation’s: Junk Monkeys

So I took a look at the British Heart Foundation’s Junk Monkey’s site last night, winner of the NMA Grand Prix prize.  What impressed me most was how this simple point-and-click game has managed to really give added-value.

Firstly – the interface – v.smart 3D world – a great look , fabulously intuitive and fun to explore. Overall very now.  Next up – the humour – buy 3 burgers for £1.20 and you get a free wallpaper – it’s not until you download it that you realise you’ve been made a sucker – as your gorgeous new desktop declares: “Grease Gibbon” at you.  The trick is played again and again – try seeing if you’re a winner with a Gloopy chocolate bar wrapper: “Sorry no luck this time?”, try again and again and again…. The Jamie’s School Dinners-style grim contents of your stomach-style videos are nicely integrated and brilliantly produce the ‘euuugh!’ factor. Finally, and this is what impressed me most, is how well the game seeks to educate on other issues beyond healthy eating: it’s not just unhealthy food that will make a junk monkey out of you.  It’s also the constant barrage of marketing messages that keep trying to sell the stuff and the only way of overcoming this battle is to arm kids with the facts and help them to develop their skills of critical evaluation – a goal to which this site admirably aspires.  There’s also a ‘don’t give away personal information on-line’ message smartly implemented but again only once you’ve already been made a sucker of!

Any criticisms?  Well you can dress up facts with 3D glasses – but ultimately it’s just fact-based information and you have to question the value when at times you’re likely to spend more time waiting for content to load than you will reading it.  And overall – I do prefer my educational content to be a little bit more interactive – so perhaps a few more mini-games, tasks or challenges.

Nice effort!

WebbliWorld

OK – so I eventually got around to taking a look at the latest Aardman/Puffin/WWF offering aimed at 7-11s.  Touted in The Guardian last week as a Facebook for pre-teens.  Slight exaggeration…  but it does sport some great illustration work and cute personalisation features.  The FAQ for parents claims: “WebbliWorld is an exciting, stimulating, virtual world that kids can explore, inhabit, belong to and share.” which it isn’t really – Club Penguin it ain’t…. though it may yet become (let’s hope).  The site is essentially a portal which allows users to view a range of pre-approved content (you’ll note the strong wildlife/environment theme going on…) and there *is* a kind of community thing going on around it: users create their own Webbli avatar, set out their profile in the form of user likes and preferences and can then rate other Webblis and selected content from the WWW, there’s also a (very) limited chat function and a virtual currency – quite a lot of fun but a lot of time it’s not particularly ‘interactive’. I can’t help but think that there’s probably another way to do this but with all the safety issues implicit when creating content for this audience seem to be scaring the developers off (and I can see why). For my money it’s not really immersive enough to engage long term and though the home page animated ‘movies’ are cute – surely they’re missing a trick by not using more animated content to create a fully immersive landscape and – as ever – too much text and not enough sound!!

Testing Your Interactive Product with Kids

The following notes are based on the talk I presented at the New Media Knowledge: Children Online event from April, earlier this year.  I’ve just put this together as the first Plug-in Media ‘white paper’ and we’re sending it out to clients and potential clients.  If you’d like a copy get in touch: juliet@screamandshout.net. Here goes…

Part 1: What to look out for?

Text & visual design:

• Instructions: watch how the child plays the game or explores the site – do they need to read instructions or is the activity intuitive enough to pick up straightaway?  Teenagers will plough-in and learn as they go along but a smaller child (playing alone or with a grown-up) may need guidance.  Consider small areas of contextual help on each page rather than a full page of text which can be off-putting.

• Age appropriate font: is the product’s selected font legible and of an appropriate scale?   Products for children with emergent reading skills demand larger font sizes and ‘open’ characters such as ‘a’s and ‘g’s. Sassoon is a font used for many educational products aimed at children of primary school age.

• Age appropriate vocabulary: make sure you test comprehension skills. On a website – are your navigation headings being understood by the intended audience?

• Button text: are you relying on your users to read text on buttons and navigation – all users but particularly those with no or emergent reading skills will benefit from meaningful icons accompanying text.

• Rollover states: make sure you use them – young users should always be rewarded with an interaction when they click where they’re supposed to (and sometimes when they don’t!).

• Audio reinforcement: if your product is aimed at pre-readers or if it has an accessibility requirement you may need to think about audio reinforcement (voiceover) on text.

Mouse control:

• Drag and drop: are you employing drag and drop functionality?  This is quite a complex mouse skill.  Many products aimed at very young children are now employing ‘click and stick’ where the user clicks to select, moves the mouse and then clicks to release.  This is much easier for younger users to pick up.  See the following game I produced: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/totstv/games_stories/splishsplash/  as a good demonstration of this in action.

• Hit areas: are the active areas on buttons large enough?  It can be hard for small hands to position the mouse on anything too small and they often ‘slip off’.

• Scrolling: are you expecting your users to scroll?  If so – don’t – they won’t!  Bear in mind that many school IT suites still have monitors set at 800×600 screen resolution.

• Click-happy?  Are your users clicking more than is required?  Investigate why – perhaps there is a loading issue?  Perhaps they’re not getting an immediate interaction on a button?

Content:

• Attention span: we all know that children have a short attention span.  Use a stopwatch in your test session and work out how long they spend on your content before their attention wanders.

• Speed: if you’re testing a game make sure you double-check any timed elements – how long do they actually take to complete an activity and is the reward/punishment (win or lose) appropriate to their skill level?

• Characters: children respond well to the use of characters and immersive environments to directly engage and bring content to life.  If you’re already doing this make sure you test the characters you use and get kids to describe their personalities – is that what you intended? 

• Environments: immersive environments can increase time spent using your product: exploring a world becomes an activity in its own right.  See the following game I produced, where I’ve known users as young as three spend up to 50 minutes at a time playing and exploring:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/bobthebuilder/fun/sunflower.shtml

•  Sound: if your product is built in Flash – make sure you’re using it – the audience will love you for it!

Part 2: Organising a Test SessionEnvironment:

• Home or school?  Testing is most useful if the test environment simulates the actual situation in which the product will be used.  Testing at home is easier to manage: kids feel relaxed and it’s easy to keep them occupied.  If your product is intended for school use, you’ll need to check how successfully it works on an interactive whiteboard.

• Singles or pairs?  Consider whether you want to test children singly or in pairs – you’ll get different results according to the set-up.  Children often view playing computer games as a social activity – they enjoy doing it together – they encourage one another and pass on tips (peer tutoring).

• Include adults? Simulate the relationships in which your users will experience your product: a kids product doesn’t stop with children as end users – often children’s parents, carers and teachers are the gatekeepers to their online experiences.

Observations Techniques & Note-taking:

• Using cameras: I often use a video camera to record the session:  things move fast when testing and you won’t remember everything.  You’ll need to draw up a consent form for parents to sign if you do.

• Adult involvement: you’ll need at least 2 adults involved in the session – that way one can play the role of the parent – handling the direct interaction with the child and the other can be an observer and note-taker.  Both adults should be CRB-checked.

• Note-taking: kids often become put-off or shy if they see you taking notes – make sure you do it surepticiously.  You’ll find you won’t have time to write anything too lengthy – I tend draw up a grid where I can note and circle different reactions and leave space for key quotes.

Session Structure:

• Warm-up activity: this helps children get familiar with the test environment and can produce helpful information in its own right: getting children to do drawings or play with Lego indicates how they think about a particular subject and enables you to gauge their cognitive skills.

• Paper prototyping: this works well doing the early stages of a project life-cycle – design concepts printed out on boards can be shown to a group and produce early reactions that could save you money in the long-run.

• Screen-based tasks: these are specific activities worked out on a coded prototype.  Set out a list of specific tasks but expect the session to be more freeform than that – children are born explorers and you’ll probably learn more by letting them take the reins and prompting only where necessary.

• Evaluation: this is helpful in getting a general summary or conclusion – what the children thought about what they’ve did and whether they enjoyed it.  I’ve found Janet Read’s Fun Toolkit useful for this: Using the Fun Toolkit and Other Survey Methods to Gather Opinions in Child Computer Interaction

• Reward: always offer a reward when the children have completed the test session.  Keep it simple: a magazine or a print-out of their efforts.

• Food and drink: we all know the effect food has on children’s activity levels: don’t forget to keep them fed and watered – but save chocolate and ice cream for the end of the session!

A new place to be…

From the ashes of Scream Out Loud… (OK so it’s still burning faster than Guy Fawkes on bonfire night)… but from the soon to be smoldering Scream Out Loud … comes Scream and Shout.  For now a blog and I’ll take it from there.

Scream and shout concerns itself with looking at how children aged 0-16, their parents, carers, and teachers use interactive media today. Having established this niche through my old company Scream Out Loud, I have an in-depth knowledge of this audience and this blog will be the focus for my continued work this field.