Develop outstanding tablet apps for children

The magic of tablet is that even children can quickly learn to use it, which makes it an ideal tool for children's education. For developers, this is a market with great potential and many people have already joined the market. However, developing applications for children is not that simple. It requires a deep understanding of children's behavior and psychology and applies them to the design of applications. Recently, AllthingsD interviewed developers at zhima studio and talked about some experiences in developing children's applications.

Education experts at Sesame studio noted that children tend to use landscape screens and put their palms at the bottom. This means that if the developer places the icon at the bottom of the screen, the chance of the children to press by mistake will increase. In addition, do not allow interactions with items on the screen at any time. Otherwise, the children will be distracted when reading the story. Mindy Brooks, Director of Education and Research at Sesame studio, said, "A good practice is to activate additional features after the children finish all the text on the page ."

They have summarized these experiences and posted them online. Any developer who makes a child application can download and learn. It involves many details, such as the use of fonts and sounds, and how to encourage children to answer wrong questions.

At present, developers of zhima studio have created 45 applications for different touch screen devices. Brooks said that the key point is to provide different operations for interactive books. The best practice, he says, is to provide a "parents" model that teaches parents through simple guidance so that they can read with their children. Given that children use tablets on their own, designers use virtual Muppet roles to replace their parents and lead their children to interact.

Developing a tablet application naturally involves gesture operations. Brooks said that clicking is the most natural and slide easily, but the children often cannot do it at once. Double-click is one of the most unnatural gestures. In this regard, the children and the parents who use PC are very different.