By Sean Carton, Chief Experience Office Carton Donofrio Partners

Kids can be a tough audience to impress on the Web.

"These buttons look like crap," comments 10-year-old Alex with a wry grin, studying a printout of a proposed design for an anti-drug site he's been asked to evaluate. "It's kind of fruity…immature," adds Ben a 13 year old who freely admits that his favorite computer activity is playing "Tomb Raider" on his PC.

Nodding her head thoughtfully, Professor Nancy Kaplan, director of the University of Baltimore's School of Information Arts and Technologies records their comments on a whiteboard at the front of the room. She knows that while their feedback might be delivered in a style a little different than she's used to hearing from her fellow academics, if you're going to design sites for kids, you'd better listen to what they have to say. After all, these 11 kids gathered together on a rainy Saturday morning aren't just passive observers of the project, they're full design partners.

For the past 7 months, members of UB's School of Information Arts and Technologies, in partnership with University of Maryland College Park's Human Computer Interface Lab have been working with teams of young students from the Baltimore area to "invent, create, and evaluate interfaces and other software design elements." Their three-year grant from the National Science Foundation has allowed them to explore what happens when kids and technology come together.

"It's really fun! It's an eye opener. You think you know, especially those of us who raised children, what a kid is being about. Adulthood obliterates childhood. You can't get back to that country. You need natives."

Employing a process called "intergenerational team design," UB's combination of "big partners" (graduate students and faculty) and "little partners" (kids between 10 and, on this morning, 16) expands on traditional usability testing techniques by getting kids directly involved in the process of building Web sites and software.

Key to the process is contextual inquiry, looking at what kids do with existing software. Aimed at getting beyond some of the verbal limitations that kids often have when expressing why they do what they do, contextual inquiry goes beyond what kids say they do and looks directly at what they actually do.

Technology immersion, surrounding the kids with the latest in high-tech gear, also can lead to new findings. By giving children the technological tools and letting them play, researchers can observe what happens when kids are in control.

But key to the process is participatory design, a technique that gets kids directly involved in commenting on-and ultimately building-the interfaces that they will hopefully interact with. And when you put kids in front of design prototypes and ask them to comment, the results reveal just how savvy today's teens are about design, marketing, and communications.

Commenting on a drug-facts quiz presented in one of the prototypes she's evaluating, 16 year old Bethany is clearly cognizant of the potential for manipulation. "I didn't like the quiz," she notes, thoughtfully kitting her brows as she considers her comments about a question that attempts to educate kids about the potential dangerous side effects of the drug Ecstasy. "Ten-to-one the answer is going to be the worst one just to scare you."

"A better handle on the audience."
"They come up with absolutely stunning ideas. Things we don't think about or wouldn't come up with on their own. They're a stimulus for our work."

Example: Search interfaces: "One of our kids said that she wanted to be able to tell the computer that she was guessing about something. She was going to solve this problem by typing into the search box 'I think' that would give the computer the option to give her different responses." 13 year old Ebony.
"There have been a large number of moments over the past year."

"Two parts: what matters to the population and how to make it work for the population. Kids bring a perspective to this work that we wouldn't come up with on our own."

Contextual: kids interview other kids. We discovered that reading in the context of school has other apparatus around it. Kids need to be able to take notes, bookmark things. We brainstormed and we came up with the idea of rubberstamps, bookmarks, and a notepad. Rubberstamp: good idea, question, mark of importance to them.

Technology immersion: Start teaching Flash, they're starting to work on their own game. To give them an opportunity to explore technologies that they aren't exposed to in school and at home. The kids drew an animated dragon. We were a little surprised that they don't use them that much, though they're very knowledgeable about how to use them.

The oldest design team: 14 years

"For these kids, I think, a computer in the household is as remarkable as a microwave oven."

"In terms of the use of the word technology, this won't be a technology for them."

Recruitment: start with people you know.

Oddly enough, gender, ethnic, divisions. Different genders don't mix well at this age.

"Kids see right through it in a nanosecond. They're very aware that all the messages they see are structured against them. They smell a rat right away."

Three year funding.

Web Site Funded: National Institute on Drug Abuse

Whole Project funded by NSF

We hope to write more grants to keep it going.
Goals: have a research component for graduate students to have a design partnership and understand how this process works in the design process.

Allison Druin: Assistant Prof. At UMCP. Appointment in Computer Science, college of information studies. Been doing this for 7 years, her methodology. Grant meant partnering to support the growth of this design team. They are developing the international children's digital library, being programmed at HCIL. Benjamin Bedersen, Director of HICL.

An effort to get children's books delivered through the Web. A joint effort funded by NSF and others. Consortium from HCIL, Library of Congress, and Internet Archive Project. Launched last fall. From all over the world. Multilingual. IT support services. Basic to most strategic. Center for Community Technology Service.

Sean Carton, Chief Experience Office Carton Donofrio Partners www.cartondonofrio.com

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