Evaluating Childrens Interactive Products: Principles and Practices for Interaction Designers

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.

PART 1 CHILDREN AND TECHNOLOGY

1 WHAT IS A CHILD
2 CHILDREN AND INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGY
3 THE INTERACTIVE PRODUCT LIFECYCLE

PART 2 EVALUATING WITH AND FOR CHILDREN

4 ETHICAL PRACTICE IN EVALUATIONS
5 PLANNING THE EVALUATION STUDY
6 BEFORE THE EVALUATION
7 DURING THE EVALUATION
8 AFTER THE EVALUATION

PART 3 METHODS OF EVALUATION

9 RECORDING AND LOGGING
10 OBSERVATION METHODS
11 VERBALIZATION METHODS
12 THE WIZARD OF OZ METHOD
13 SURVEY METHODS
14 DIARIES
15 INSPECTION METHODS

PART 4 CASE STUDIES

16 CASE STUDY 1: GAME-CONTROLLING GESTURES IN
INTERACTIVE GAMES
17 CASE STUDY 2: EMBEDDING EVALUATION IN THE
DESIGN OF A PERVASIVE GAME CONCEPT
18 CASE STUDY 3: USING SURVEY METHODS AND EFFICIENCY METRICS