Website for children: search strategies and interface desgin : Three studies on childen's search performance and evaluation

Abstract

Children experience all kinds of problems using search interfaces for adults such as Google. The research reported in this dissertation is about the design of informational interfaces for children between 8 and 12 years old. The goal of the research was to learn more about interfaces that ‘work’ for children and interfaces that children ‘like’. The first step in the research was a corpus study to identify design conventions of children’s search interfaces. The design conventions showed that designers of children’s informational websites often follow general web design guidelines. A closer look at the data revealed three categories of informational websites for children: 1) classical interface design with a classical interaction style and without playful graphics (Classic) 2) interface design with playful graphics, but a classical interaction style (Classical play) 3) playful interface design with playful graphics and a playful interaction style (Image map) The second step was an explorative study (with 32 children aged 8-12) to explore children’s search behaviour on existing search interfaces. The results of this study suggested that playful navigation lowers usability of a website but playful visual design seemed to have a positive effect on perception of hedonic quality. These research directions were empirically tested in an experiment (with 158 children aged 10-12), which was the third step in the research. The same website was designed in the three different types of interface design. The used search method (i.e. browsing or searching) was manipulated by providing a website version to the children with or without a search engine. We concluded from the studies that there is no difference in children’s search performance between the three different types of interface design. However, the children evaluated the Classical play website as best to work with and the Image map website as least good to work with. Children appreciate playful design but it may not be at the expense of usability for children. Ease of use is more important for children than having a playful experience. Furthermore, providing a search engine is an absolute necessity to optimally support children in effective and efficient search performance.