=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Search User Interface Design for Children: Challenges and Solutions
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-909/poster7.pdf
|volume=Vol-909
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/eurohcir/GossenNN12
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==Search User Interface Design for Children: Challenges and Solutions==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-909/poster7.pdf
Search User Interface Design for Children:
Challenges and Solutions
Tatiana Gossen Marcus Nitsche Andreas Nürnberger
Faculty of Computer Science, Faculty of Computer Science, Faculty of Computer Science,
Otto-von-Guericke-University, Otto-von-Guericke-University, Otto-von-Guericke-University,
Germany Germany Germany
tatiana.gossen@ovgu.de marcus.nitsche@ovgu.de andreas.nuernberger@ovgu.de
ABSTRACT games or watching videos on Youtube, for communication and for
In this paper we describe the main challenges in designing search information search, e.g. related to their school activities [17].
user interfaces for children. Young users require emotional sup- In the modern society, finding information in the Internet is an
port, language support, memory and cognitive support, interaction important skill that a child needs to develop. If a child succeeds
support and support to judge document relevance. We discuss pos- in finding the information, it feels competent and develops self-
sible solutions for each challenge. We also present a working pro- confidence. In contrast, if it is not able to find good results, a child
totype of a web search interface whose main target group are users may develop a feeling of incompetence. That could even lead to a
of primary school age. Our interface is colourful and voice sup- feeling of inferiority, especially in the “industry versus inferiority”
ported, contains possibilities for both searching through text in- period of child’s psychosocial development (age 6–12) [5]. Chil-
put and browsing in menu categories, has a guidance avatar for dren’s immaturity in the emotional domain is not the only aspect
emotional support and a result storage functionality to support chil- that is different from adult users. Children’s cognitive abilities are
dren’s cognitive recall. also not fully formed [21]. Thus, children do not have the same
abilities and knowledge as adults and constitute a separate user
group. The special characteristics of children are challenging and
Keywords should be considered by the development of web search engines,
Web Search Engine, Children, Search User Interface. including the design of web search user interfaces (UIs).
In order to support children in their search, special search en-
gines for children, have been launched, e.g. kidrex.org, onekey.com,
Categories and Subject Descriptors askkids.com, kidsclick.org, dipty.com, blinde-kuh.de, fragfinn.de,
H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Search helles-koepfchen.de, quinturakids.com etc. Currently, their main
and Retrieval.; H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: purpose is helping children to find only child appropriate content in
User Interfaces. the WWW. Another important aspect is the usability of those search
engines. It is of importance that search engines for children match
the particular skills of children in order to increase their usability
General Terms for children. Unfortunately, current search engines for children not
Design, Human Factors, Management. always match the skills and abilities of children [6].
The aim of this work is to develop a novel web search UI which
1. INTRODUCTION meets the needs of children, i.e. fits their cognitive abilities, knowl-
edge and provides the necessary emotional support. This interface
In times of digital natives more and more children are going
should support children in their search in a web document collec-
online. According to a recent report [8], children of ages five to
tion. Our primary focus is textual information retrieval, as web
nine spend about 28 minutes online daily and this time continu-
documents mostly have a textual form and are written in natural
ously grows. The German 2010 KIM1 study [17] reports that about
languages. When designing tools for children, there is a need to
60% of the German children of ages six to thirteen use the Internet
target very narrow age groups [19]. Cognitive abilities and knowl-
and 70% of those use search engines. Children are using the Inter-
edge of a fourteen years old and a seven years old child strongly
net for different purposes, especially for entertainment like online
differ. In this paper we concentrate on primary school age children
1
KIM is a German acronym for Children and Media (“Kinder + as in our opinion this user group is the most challenging one. In the
Medien, Computer + Internet”). It is a German user study which is following we underline challenges in the design of web search user
regularly conducted in the form of interviews. interfaces for young users and present possible design solutions.
2. DESIGN CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS
Emotional Support: Based on Erickson’s theory of psychosocial
development [5] children require emotional support and a feeling of
success. This can be achieved by proper guidance. The idea here is
to provide children with enough help to support their search process
in order to avoid frustration. We propose building a guidance avatar
Presented at EuroHCIR2012. Copyright c 2012 for the individual papers
by the papers’ authors. Copying permitted only for private and academic that captures children’s failures, e.g. getting no results or spelling
purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors. mistakes, and explain how to do better.
Figure 1: Screenshot of the Knowledge Journey user interface: a guidance figure and a treasure chest on the right hand side, query
input elements on the top, a menu with many categories on the left hand side and a coverflow with search results in the middle.
Language Support: Children, especially in the primary school than that of adults. Therefore, the search user interface should pre-
age, read slowly and are still learning to write [23]. In addition, fer simple point-and-click interactions and clickable interface ele-
children have a limited domain knowledge [11] and difficulties with ments should be large enough to be easily hit [3].
typing using a keyboard [22]. This results in problems with query Relevance Support: Children also have difficulties to judge
formulation and spelling errors [2, 7]. Therefore, a search UI for the relevance of the retrieved documents to their information need
children should provide different possibilities for children to for- [12]. Children are frustrated by too many results and do not have
mulate their information need. We suggest using a browsing menu the ability to determine the most relevant and “best” documents
with many categories which meet children’s information needs. [14]. A child-suitable form of results presentation can support chil-
This menu should be image based and audio supported in order to dren’s judgement of results’ relevance and provide relevance clues.
navigate ergonomically and fast within it. Besides the browsing, we Each result item should have a website image and its description.
also suggest to provide the opportunity of keyword-oriented search Akkersdijk et al. [1] also suggest displaying the results using a
supported by spelling correction mechanisms. Children can choose Coverflow technique where the user navigates horizontally. Cover-
the way they want to start searching. With an increasing domain flow allows users to concentrate on one item at a time. It also does
knowledge (possibly gained from browsing in categories) children not require complex interactions like scrolling as a vertical results
can employ keyword-oriented search more efficient. list used in common search engines.
Cognitive Support: According to theories of human cognitive
development, human development occurs in a sequential order in 3. SEARCH INTERFACE
which later knowledge, abilities and skills build upon the previous We considered the requirements for user interface design and de-
ones [20]. Piaget [21] describes four development stages. Children veloped a search user interface for children called Knowledge Jour-
in primary school age are in the concrete operational stage of their ney (KJ). We used multimedia elements in the UI design to make
development which is characterized as a stage where children learn the appearance attractive for children. We also took into account
to reason logically and have difficulties with thinking abstractly. that all clickable items are of appropriate size. We used font sizes
Their understanding is limited to concrete and physical concepts. larger or equal to 14 pt as advised in [3].
Therefore, categories used in the menu should not be abstract and Our search user interface KJ uses the metaphor of a treasure hunt
browsing menu should have a flat hierarchical structure. Metaphors where a user takes a journey to gather relevant search results. The
used in the user interface should be familiar to children and have a interface of KJ is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of five groups of ele-
connection to the physical world (this is also advised in [3]). ments: a guidance avatar (here a penguin pirate), a treasure chest, a
Memory Support: According to the information processing the- coverflow, elements for keyword search and a pie-menu for brows-
ory [13], information processing of children differs from the adults’ ing. In the following we are going to describe each element group.
in terms of how they apply information and what memory limits
they have, i.e. children can represent and process less informa- 3.1 Guidance Avatar
tion than adults. Information retrieval processes may cause chil- In order to start a “Knowledge Journey” a child selects a guid-
dren’s memory to overload. This explains children’s “looping” be- ance avatar (see Fig. 2a). The avatar concept is familiar to children
haviour during the information seeking process. Children click, from computer games. It allows individual user personalization,
repeat searches and revisit the same result web page more often e.g. girls can select a female pirate or penguin, there are also fig-
than adults do [2, 7]. To support children’s cognitive recall we can ures for younger and older users. The guidance avatar supports
provide a result storage functionality. It is also important to show a children’s search process in order to avoid frustration: in the cur-
clear back-button or just present the search result in the same win- rent version it supports children by providing a spelling correction
dow (e.g. using frames) in order for children not to get lost. after a misspelled query is submitted (see Fig. 2b) and enlarges im-
Interaction Support: The information processing rate influences ages of menu categories providing animations (Fig. 1). A further
the fine motor skills of children [4, 10]. Young children’s per- possible function of the guidance avatar is an explanation how to
formance in pointing movements, e.g. using a mouse, are lower search and what to do in case of finding no results.
(a) (b)
Figure 2: Screenshot of the user interface: select which pirate accompanies you by the Knowledge Journey (a) and guidance avatar
makes a suggestion by a misspelled query (b).
3.2 Browsing Menu The result presentation is shown in Fig. 1. We use a coverflow
In order to support children who have difficulties to formulate a where each item is presented on a papyrus roll that contains the
query, a browsing menu with many categories is designed. There webpage’s title on top, its thumbnail (preview) in the middle, a
exist different types of menus. We used a pie menu as it can be textual summary and a result number according to the relevance on
operated with simple point and click interactions and presents a the bottom. A child can interact with our coverflow using simple
good overview of categories. The pie menu is placed on a steer- point and click operations. It can open a webpage by clicking on
ing wheel. We use the metaphor that a steering wheel is used to the result item that is in focus or switch to the next or previous page
define the search coordinates to provide a search direction. Ini- by clicking on an item that is not in focus. The whole papyrus roll
tially top categories of the menu are shown (see Fig. 3, middle). area is clickable and thus it is easy to hit.
We choose menu categories like entertainment, sports and hobbies, When designing a search UI for children, search results and links
history, universe, geography, nature, persons etc., as they meet the should not be opened in a new window or tab as this inhibits back-
information needs of children described in [16]. Each category has tracking with the browsers’ back button and thus provokes “loop-
a number of subcategories. Children are comfortable to use a two- ing” behaviour. Users can easily get confused or lost and start
level hierarchical organized menu for browsing [11]. Correspond- searching for the way back. We decided to open a webpage in the
ing subcategories are opened when a child clicks on a top category. same window using a frame (see Fig. 4). In order to return to the
Mousing over the category triggers an action of a guidance avatar, search a child clicks on the “X”-Button. It can also store a webpage
i.e. it shows a large animation to explain the category. Icons and using a “+”-Button.
animations are used to indicate categories because images better
match the cognitive skills of children than written words [9]. They 3.4 Results Storage
also make the user interface more attractive for children as they A child can store relevant results in the “treasure chest”. This
prefer colourful designs with multimedia content [18, 15, 3]. In ad- form of storage aims to support children’s memory to prevent cog-
dition, we provide voice support. By placing a mouse long enough nitive overload. The number of stored results is shown near the
on the pie menu item, a voice explanation is played telling what chest. Furthermore, we use physical concepts like the size of the
category is selected. Users can also hide the menu by clicking in chest to show the amount of “treasure”, i.e. a chest icon becomes
the middle of it. Then, only the wheel is shown (see Fig. 3, left). larger with each additional stored result (compare Fig. 1 and 5).
The menu can be opened again by clicking on the wheel. If a child By clicking on the chest, a journey journal opens (Fig. 5). We use
clicks a category it receives results visualized as a coverflow. The a book metaphor, where each reversal of the book contains infor-
category name is also placed as a text in the search input field. mation about a stored webpage: its thumbnail, a textual summary
and a title. A child can add notes to each website. It can also open
3.3 Results Presentation the website again by clicking on its picture in the book. If a child
does not like a website anymore, it can delete it by clicking on the
Figure 3: Screenshot of the user interface: browsing menu on a
steering wheel in three different levels (closed, opened, opened
with 2nd hierarchy level). Figure 4: Screenshot of the UI: website opens in a frame.
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