Table Of ContentDesigning Digital
Products for Kids
Deliver User Experiences
That Delight Kids, Parents,
and Teachers
―
Rubens Cantuni
DESIGNING DIGITAL
PRODUCTS FOR KIDS
DELIVER USER EXPERIENCES THAT
DELIGHT KIDS, PARENTS, AND TEACHERS
Rubens Cantuni
Designing Digital Products for Kids
Rubens Cantuni
Monza, Italy
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-6289-4 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-6287-0
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6287-0
Copyright © 2020 by Rubens Cantuni
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Printed on acid-free paper
To Yui, who fills my life with joy and laughter.
Contents
About the Author � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �vii
Acknowledgments� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �ix
Introduction � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �xi
Chapter 1: Why Design Apps for Kids? � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1
Chapter 2: Before You Start, Know the Industry� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 11
Chapter 3: Know Your Target Audience� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 31
Chapter 4: Concept� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 41
Chapter 5: Gamification � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 75
Chapter 6: Safety Measures � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 89
Chapter 7: Interaction Design � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 99
Chapter 8: UI Design � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 147
Chapter 9: User Testing with Kids� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 205
Chapter 10: M arket Your Product� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 217
Chapter 11: Beyond the Screen� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 239
Chapter 12: C onclusion � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 251
I ndex� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 253
About the Author
Rubens Cantuni is an Italian digital product
designer with 15 years of experience across two
continents. He has won an Emmy Award in the
“Outstanding Interactive” category, a Webby
Honoree, and several Parents’ Choice awards
and Teachers’ Choice awards for his work on
digital products for children. His experience
spans from agencies to startups to big corpora-
tions, covering multiple design roles for a wide
variety of clients in different industries. He also
writes about design on Medium and Builtin.com
and has past experience as a character designer
and illustrator, freelancing for many companies
worldwide.
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t be possible without the help of many people.
The ones who agreed to be bothered by me and my questions for the “Industry
Insights” interviews. Some of them are friends and former colleagues, others
heard from me for the first time because of this book, nonetheless, despite
being incredibly busy professionals, have been so gracious to answer all my
questions, providing incredible value to this project.
My daughter Yui and my wife Kanako, who tolerated my being busy during the
long realization of this book, with my skipping breakfast to write before work,
my writing time during weekends, my “sorry, no Netflix tonight, I gotta finish
a chapter.”
I wish to thank all the nonfiction authors in the design field, who inspired and
motivated me to start this project and made me believe it was possible.
Lastly, a special thanks to Shivangi Ramachandran, Rita Fernando, Nancy Chen,
and Apress for believing in a first-time author and his project and giving him
this fantastic and educational opportunity.
Introduction
It was a late warm, sunny afternoon in April 2017, in Los Angeles. For the first
time in my life I rented a tuxedo, and I was getting ready for an event that
required a black-tie outfit. I was about to leave my apartment in Venice,
headed to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium for the Daytime Emmy Awards,
where I was nominated in Outstanding Interactive, a category that, until a few
weeks before that day, I wasn’t even aware it existed.
How did an Italian digital product designer end up at an event where fellow
nominees included the likes of Guillermo Del Toro? It was all thanks to a digi-
tal product for kids I worked on.
That night, the team working on the StoryBots’ digital products, which
included me, went home with a heavy golden statue. But my experience with
these kinds of projects started a few years before that, when I designed the
first educational apps for a startup, or websites like the one that Swatch did
for their kids’ collection, among many others. Why then did I tell you the
story about the Emmys, though? To brag? Well, yes, a bit of that (it won’t hap-
pen again in this book), but to also let you know that digital products for kids
are not a niche, a minor genre. You can get very rewarding results from them;
maybe not a mansion in Malibu, but as a designer you get to create products
that educate and entertain little humans, the future of our species, all the
while perhaps accumulating some awards and recognitions along the way.
Ain’t that something?
In 2018, I came back to Italy and I wrote a series of articles on the same topic
of this book on Medium. All the interest they generated, the requests for
advice and consulting, made me realize that there is a need for a reference
book on this subject. When I was taking my first baby steps (pun intended) in
designing digital products for kids, there had been a lot of trial and error, a lot
of assumptions, and a lot of questions without answers. I write this book,
wishing I had this at that time.
How This Book Is Organized
The concept is to follow an ideal process for the genesis of a digital product
aimed toward children. Starting with research, so knowing the industry and
learning about your target; then moving on to concept and design, from UX
xii Introduction
and interaction to UI, animation, and sounds; user testing and validating your
idea, before releasing it; evaluating possible business models and marketing
solutions. In the end we’ll also look at interesting technologies and concepts
that go beyond the screen.
Each chapter works independently and you can jump directly to the one you’re
most interested in. You can move back and forth and easily use this book as a
reference whenever you need information on a particular phase of product
development.
What We Won’t Be Talking About
The primary audience for this book are digital product designers,1 and, with
them in mind, I defined the table of contents for this book. We’ll talk about
some technicalities in Chapter 6, when evaluating the right platform for our
digital product, but we won’t be talking about coding. For two reasons:
I don’t think product designers should code. I think they should have an
awareness of how code works, but they are designers and that’s what they
should stick to.
I’m not a developer (yes, I made some mobile games, but that’s a story for
another book), so I’m not qualified to talk about that.
Both excellent reasons to skip the subject and leave it to other books (there
are plenty out there, each one with a more mysterious name than the next
one).
We won’t be talking about video games (and trust me, I love them and I would
talk about them for hours—ask my wife), unless specifically targeted to K-12
children. What I mean is: Can a 10-year-old play Minecraft? Absolutely. Can a
6-year-old play Candy Crush? Yes, of course. Were they made specifically for
kids? No. Then we won’t talk about them in this book.
Would a college student play with Peppa Pig: Holiday? Unless the student is a
reader of this book and wants to design an app for kids, my guess is no, they
wouldn’t. So we’ll probably talk about that game here.
You got the idea. To be 100% honest, I’ll mention some not-for-kids video
game titles here and there, when they help to explain an idea, but we’ll never
analyze them under the lens of products for children.
1 Cantuni, Rubens. “What’s a Digital Product Designer?” Medium. UX Collective, 18 Jan.
2020. Web. 24 May 2020. <https://uxdesign.cc/whats-a-digital-product-designer-
50e09a125efb>.
Introduction xiii
Will This Book Be Still Useful in the
Next Year? And the Year After That?
And 5 Years from Now?
I can’t guarantee your little nephew will find a job, years from now, thanks
to this book. But, besides some information strictly connected to current
technologies (things like devices and development platforms), most of the
concepts in this book have a very long expiration date and some of them are
even timeless—unless kids of the future will be born with superpowers or
technology will be so advanced it’ll be able to read our mind.
Is Designing for Children Really That
Different from Designing for Adults?
It is. The framework is certainly similar, virtually the same, but there are par-
ticularities in how to handle tests, in what the best practices for UX and UI
are, and so on.
Designing for kids depends on many things, including factoring in the rapid
pace of physical and mental development in children. While adults have more
or less the same motor and cognition skills that stay the same for many years,
kids develop quickly and just a few months could be enough for considerable
advances in their proficiencies. This has a huge impact on how we design the
user experience for children.
When using an app, adults are more interested in a task-oriented approach,
meaning they know what they want to accomplish and they want to do it fast
and easy. Children, on the other hand, prefer an experience-oriented approach;
they are in it for the journey, not much for the result.
How Much About Child Development
and Education Do I Need to Know in Order
to Design Digital Products for Them?
The more you know the better, but no one expects a designer to be also a
pediatrician or an infant psychologist or a pedagogist. You should have a basic
understanding of how each age group corresponds to different stages of cog-
nitive and physical development and what these involve. If you are building an
educational experience (but remember that it’s not mandatory for it to be
strictly educational), you’ll need the support of experts in the field, during the
conceptual phase and then during testing.
