youtube kids

overview

For this project, our goal was to work with someone who is a member of a typically excluded community to design a new product that would help better serve their needs. Our group worked directly with a five-year-old child to redesign his most used app, YouTube Kids. To design technology for a child, we needed to include them as an equal partner in the process.

Designing for children requires age-specific considerations due to differences in cognitive and learning abilities, such as reading comprehension. This presented a unique opportunity to explore design styles that would target his age group, particularly through the co-design approach.

  • Class Project (Inclusive Design)

  • October 2021 – December 2021

  • 3 graduate students from the HCI Program at UMD

  • Inclusive Design

  • Participatory Design, UX Research, UX Design, Visual Design, Interaction Design, Prototyping

  • Figma, Miro, Google Workspace

“Children have specific interests and online behavior and require design styles that match their needs.”

— Neilson Norman Group

our participant

  • Is familiar with touchscreen devices.

  • Reads up to 3-letter words.

  • Makes decisions based on visual information.

problem understanding interview

During the problem understanding interview, we learned that our participant has an iPad with two applications, YouTube Kids and Disney+. Our participant shared that he primarily watches YouTube Kids and that he needs to ask an adult to search for videos on a specific topic, such as tractors, due to his inability to spell and type longer words. He also shared that his favorite TV show to watch on YouTube Kids is Paw Patrol.

Our participant expressed a desire for interfaces with buttons, as well as for physical interactions with the iPad, such as throwing the device or submerging it underwater. He also shared that he wanted game-like activities integrated in the technology design. With these considerations in mind and given our participant’s familiarity with the interface, we decided to use YouTube Kids as a starting point. We believed the participant would feel more invested in the design solution if integrated on their favorite app. We were also interested in exploring how to make a passive activity, like watching videos, more interactive for children and how to support their autonomy.

participant challenges

  • Our participant was unable to search for content within apps due to parental controls and his inability to type.

  • Our participant had trouble focusing on things that require significant cognitive effort for long periods of time.

  • YouTube Kids lacked opportunities for him to interact with the interface when watching videos.

project description

We identified several problems and needs that arose from the initial interview. The participant had limited autonomy to search for content within the app due to parental controls. If he wanted to find a video on tractors, for example, he needed to ask an adult to look for him.

He also expressed a desire for interactive games that would allow him to press buttons. Given that the participant had trouble focusing on things that require significant cognitive effort, we thought that he might benefit from short, interspersed activities. As a result, we decided to explore how to increase the interactivity of the video streaming application and how to integrate more game-like activities into the interface.

co-design session

For our co-design session, we planned several activities to get our participant’s feedback on some of our design ideas and to also get a sense of his design preferences. We tried to make these activities fun for our participant to keep his attention throughout the entire session. We started the session by having a quick snack break and asking him an icebreaker question to make him more comfortable and excited for the session.

After that, we asked our participant to create an avatar of himself using a series of stickers and emojis, which we planned to integrate into the “create profile” section of our YouTube Kids interface. Our participant really enjoyed this activity, so we decided that we would include it in our final prototype.

Then we showed the participant three different low-fidelity designs for the YouTube Kids video category screen and asked him to choose his favorite one. Afterwards, we invited him to react to our ideas with emojis. Because our participant loved choosing emojis, we decided to integrate emoji reactions into our final interface design.

After that, we tested out one of the game activities that we were planning to include in our new interface, which our participant really enjoyed. For our final activity, we asked our participant to choose between different colors and shapes to get a sense of his design preferences. During this process, we discovered that he really loves rainbow colors and fun shapes.

findings

  • Our participant enjoyed looking at and choosing emojis.

  • Our participant loved creating his own avatar.

  • Our participant liked looking at big, colorful images.

 key tasks for youtube kids

Following our co-design session, we defined the following key tasks for our YouTube Kids interface:

  • Allow children to customize their profiles.

  • Allow children to independently search for content to watch.

  • Allow children to be able to interact with the interface both physically and digitally.

final designs

After our co-design session, we took the insights that we learned and created a final prototype. We implemented some of our participant’s design preferences by including fun colors and shapes. We also included some of the activities that he enjoyed doing, such as creating his own avatar, reacting to videos with emojis, and doing fun activities in between videos.

Furthermore, we took our participant’s limited reading and typing abilities into account by using lots of images and including voice-overs. We also added a category page to make it easier for him to browse for videos to watch.

Because he also expressed a desire to perform more interactions with the iPad, we added a feature where he could shake the iPad to look at different video categories or to cycle between “break time” activities. Additionally, allowing him to react with emojis both during videos and after they were over gave him more opportunities to press buttons, and including the “break time” activities helped keep his attention for longer.

  • Welcome Screen

  • Select Preferences

  • Create Avatar

  • Create Avatar

  • Choose Video Category

  • Choose Video Category

  • Choose Video

  • Emoji Reaction (During Video)

  • End of Video

  • Emoji Reaction (End of Video)

  • Break Time

  • Drawing Activity

  • Drawing Activity

  • Paw Patrol Game

  • Paw Patrol Game

  • Dance Activity

  • Dance Activity

  • Reading Activity

  • Reading Activity

  • Paw Patrol Game

  • Paw Patrol Game

  • Paw Patrol Game

prototype demo

testing

Our participant had a great time testing our final prototype. We received a lot of positive feedback from him by viewing his facial expressions, even though he wasn’t able to give too much detailed feedback due to his limited vocabulary.

From our observations, we found that the “break time” activities that we included as part of our design helped our participant stay focused while using the app and helped keep him engaged. He was also very excited to push all of the buttons, and he particularly enjoyed creating his own avatar and choosing emojis. Furthermore, we found that including large, colorful images helped him choose videos on his own. When asked what he thought about the prototype, he said, “I like it!”