Evaluating Children's Interactive Products

Book excerpt: Evaluating Children's Interactive Products directly addresses the need to ensure that interactive products designed for children — whether toys, games, educational products, or websites — are safe, effective, and entertaining. It presents an essential background in child development and child psychology, particularly as they relate to technology; captures best practices for observing and surveying children, training evaluators, and capturing the child user experience using audio and visual technology; and examines ethical and legal issues involved in working with children and offers guidelines for effective risk management. Based on the authors' workshops, conference courses, and own design experience and research, this highly practical book reads like a handbook, while being thoroughly grounded in the latest research. Throughout, the authors illustrate techniques and principles with numerous mini case studies and highlight practical information in tips and exercises and conclude with three in-depth case studies. This book is recommended for usability experts, product developers, and researchers in the field. - Presents an essential background in child development and child psychology, particularly as they relate to technology - Captures best practices for observing and surveying children, training evaluators, and capturing the child user experience using audio and visual technology - Examines ethical and legal issues involved in working with children and offers guidelines for effective risk management