We have to aim our product either at 8-10 year olds, or an undergrad student, (16-22 for example.)
Children are more recently moving from the 'traditional' entertainment methods such as reading books, comics, watching TV shows or movies to using a phone, tablet or iPad to play games or watch entertainment shows. While this change is becoming more to do with technology, it doesn't always mean they are not learning the same things... videos such as those on YouTube are becoming very popular with teaching young children basic things as they are more interactive than standard books. But children are also using apps such as Zoom, Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams for online learning and sharing work with their peers while at home.
However, I feel as though undergraduates use digital devices for a more anti-social and private experience and therefore it wouldn't be useful to design a diverse educational tool for this age group as it would not get used. I am however able to design for myself as I fall into this ‘undergraduate’ category and could use myself and my peer’s opinions as great feedback.
While it might be slightly stereotypical, I think that designing for a younger target audience would allow the freedom of more colour use and bold text along with other interactive tools to make such a broad topic more interesting therefore I have chosen the 8-10 year olds as my target audience.
I read a post on Fruto by Carmen Freile - digital design considerations for a child vs adult user groups which gave me an insight into both user groups.
Digital design considerations for child vs adult user groups - Fruto
Though I thought before that it could be easier to design this brief for a child as it’s very easy to use bold and bright colours and images, Carmen says “Designing for children is so much more than making things huge, colourful, and noisy.”
Here are a few of my takeaways from this article:
In terms of design: