A Dad’s Plea To Developers Of iPad Apps For Children

I'm curious: don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games <i>at all</i>?<p>I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)<p>As a kid, I hated my hippie Montessori teacher mom for allowing me only one hour of TV per <i>week</i> as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (elementary school; I usually chose the Duke boys, and later Knight Rider). But, as an adult, I cite it often as one of the things I admire most about the way she raised me (no limits on books, nor daytime outdoor play after school, nor building things), especially after coming to understand how much easier it is to set a precocious and hyper wild little monkey in front of the boob tube so the parents can get a couple hours of peace.<p>I do think video games (especially good ones) are probably much less harmful than TV, and that they do even have some net positives for the user, in terms of developing various human abilities (cognitive and otherwise). But isn't two years old too young? Shouldn't kids of that age, instead of learning in-game physics, be learning <i>real</i> physics? Like with balls, marbles, and blocks, running and falling down, and not with animated honeypots and flying unicorns?<p>My own kid won't be here for a few more months, so I'm not preaching; just honestly asking. I know little kids <i>love</i> iPad games... but they love eating sugar cubes, too.

When we developed Aeir Talk, an speech pathology app for children with Autism, we locked the setup screen (where parents can customize the cards, pictures, and audio) behind a nondescript "Setup" button in the title bar. When tapped, it does practically nothing: It changes to describe to parents how they can unlock the setup screen: "Press While Holding 'Please'", referring to a button on the other side of the screen that is part of the apps regular function. Compared to other touchable elements in the app, the button provides very little feedback, so kids largely ignore it. The gesture requires two hands, tapping two parts of the screen at the same time, so it's unlikely for children to end up in there by accident. You can see a video of this workflow at <a href="http://aeirtalk.com/" rel="nofollow">http://aeirtalk.com/</a> .

I think in app purchases for apps targeting users under 13 is a really bad idea. Even if there isn't some dark premise behind it, I feel like an asshole every time I tell my son "no" I wont buy you extra {whatever} for your game at just 2.99. Kids games should be reasonably priced(0-5 dollars) and not monetize with ads or upsells.

I LOVE the points made in this post. I would two other observations:<p>1) Make sure your app has lightening fast response for touch events. Kids are smart, they expect that when they click a button, something should happen. If it takes over 250ms, my kid thinks it's broke and will start clicking it repeatedly.<p>2) Always use "onTouchDown" instead of "onTouchUp" when handling simple presses. My kid doesn't always release his finger after touching a button and when nothing happens, he thinks he needs to touch the button repeatedly. If the developers targeted the "Touch Down" event instead of "Touch Up" my kid wouldn't have learned this behavior.

I actually had to get a refund from Apple for an in-app purchase my son made while using Talking Tom Cat (I since deleted that app and turned off in-app purchases).<p>I've got two kids and what I would add to the observations listed in this article are as follows (these apply to any app that is intended for kids, but also apps where a significant section of the userbase might be kids - for example, my four-year-old is quite adept at Plants vs. Zombies, and given the depth of strategy utilized in that game I don't feel bad when he plays it):<p>1. No part of the application should <i>require</i> that you can read in order to use it or navigate it.<p>2. Don't pop up dialogs that a child cannot understand. For example, I watched as my child, while using an app intended for children, pressed "OK" on a dialog that asked if he wanted to turn on push notifications. That's just ridiculous! He'll press "OK" on any dialog because he just wants it to go away.<p>3. This really applies to all applications, but it becomes very apparent when watching a child use an app: the most desirable menu items should be larger and/or differently coloured than the least desirable ones. I.e. "Play" should be a big, brightly coloured button, while "Settings" should be small and tucked away.<p>4. Don't make it easy to do destructive things like delete accounts. This might seem obvious, but I have more than once opened an app only to find that my progress in it had vanished because my child had deleted my account (Plants vs. Zombies makes this too easy, for example).<p>5. On any app that has the potential to be enjoyed by both kids and adults, consider providing a kid-friendly mode that makes the game easier.<p>6. I don't know how difficult this is from a development perspective, but if possible, make the app resistant to having non-active fingers touching the screen while active fingers are attempting to use it. Kids will often grasp devices, especially phones, in such a way that fingers from (say) their left hand are touching the screen, and on some apps this causes them to cease responding to touch events from their other (right) hand.<p>7. If your app produces revenue through advertising, it probably shouldn't be marketed at young kids. Kids will press on the advertising and will just get frustrated when they arrive on a webpage somewhere, and adults will eventually delete the app because we don't want our kids feeling frustrated.

If your app for children includes in-app purchases I will delete it as soon as I realise. At present this is just a frustration for my 2 year old as he doesnt understand why the game is no longer on the screen, but as he gets older he is more likely to try and pester me into buying. Not Going To Happen, plus I will leave a 1 star review of your app based on in app purchases alone.<p>iPads and iPhones are not bought by children, they are ocassionally givent o children to use for a while, as such apps should not seek to bill parents because their kids pushed the worng button or I gave them the iPad too soon after downloading a new app (and thus entering the password).

Spot on regarding the in-app purchases.<p>I have a rule of giving 1 star rating to any kid's game that has them <i>regardless</i> of how well it's done and if my kids actually enjoy the non-gimmicky part. Milking parents by making their kids beg and nag them is an unethical way to earn money.

On in-app purchases:<p>We have an app that is targeted at kids aged 3-5 (I don't work directly on it). It is currently in the top 10 free education apps and regularly holds a spot in the top 5 grossing education apps in the UK (we currently only have UK audio). It has an average rating of 4.5 stars, with over 100 genuine 5 star reviews from satisfied parents.<p>The app is split into 10 topics, with the first free. The rest can be unlocked for $13.99.<p>It uses in-app purchasing as providing the app for free with the first section available to all is the best way we can show off our product. It isn't targeted at the kid, it is aimed at the parent of the child. In no way do we try and trick anyone into a purchase.<p>This approach has been overwhelmingly successful.<p>I honestly think the app would've got nowhere if we'd stuck it up there as a paid app for $13.99. We could have gone for separate apps, but that's much harder to maintain and market (trust me - the product I work on has over 100 versions on the app store, we're migrating to 1 with iAP).

I really, really, really wish there was some way to disable the Home button on my iPad.<p>My 19-month old and 4-year old kids, who absolutely love to sit with me and play with the iPad, simply find it irresistible to press that button. And when we're watching a movie, its a sure-fire way to ruin the whole experience. If it were lockable so that it didn't do anything, they wouldn't press it.<p>Come to think of it, the sliding-lock switch could be used for so much more. I just don't get why I can't lock the touch-screen so that it doesn't react to things - okay I understand why Apple want to keep touch enabled at all times, but why can't this be an option? (Is it an option and I'm just clueless to know? No jailbreak-solutions, please..)<p>Anyway, that one issue is an almost definite deal-breaker for us when it comes time to have some iPad time. It doesn't take long before the kids lose interest, because they press that button, the app dies, and then they're in the home-screen game, where not much exciting stuff happens (unless they make the icons jiggle and press the little X's, then Daddy gets very excited..)<p>That said, I like this article - because I'm working on a game for kids too, and the point about the bottom area of the screen being a no-no for navigation buttons is a really good point. My kids have learned to press anything and everything they can, and the kids game I'm working on is essentially a plethora of weird and fun things to press and interact with, but there will have to be some sort of trick for navigation that makes equal sense in the mind of a 4 year (and 2 year) old, as it does for a 40 year old. Talk about your tricky software problem!! :)

Make it easy for a kid to do what s/he wants, and hard to do what s/he doesn't. Anything which disrupts the play is bad, and the worst is transitions to the App Store (kid has no idea what is going on, just that something wonderful went away for no apparent reason).<p>I'll pay for toddler versions which go all out to avoid anything but core simple fun play. If anything short of pressing Home means the kid has to hand me the tablet to "fix it", I want my money back.

My 5 year old has been using his iPad since he was 4, and we've encountered all these problems and more. The funny thing though is that he learnt to work around all of them! Accidentally presses menu, after a couple of times he learns what to do.<p>I think these obstacles of bad design are just more little puzzles for children. As parents we shouldnt obsess about having a perfect environment for our kids.<p>On the other hand, what really bugs me is when educational apps can be easily gamed. The math bingo app was completely useless once my son figured out he could solve it by randomly banging on cells and would eventually win. A lot more effort should go in to designing apps so that the child learns something real, as opposed to just learning to play the game.

I find interesting his insistence that we should avoid buttons and menus on the bottom of the screen. This is extremely important, not only for kids apps. But I find that problem specially disturbing on the Android OS.<p>Pretty much everyone I hand my Android Tablet to, when they're not used it. Will instantly hit the home or back button by accident after 5 seconds of holding. Then hand it back to me with a negative impression "I think I hit something bad". After I explain where the menus are, and how to avoid them. They'll often still repeat the mistake a few more times before either getting used to it, or just getting bored.<p>So for our apps. I'd advise to avoid any page switching buttons in the bottom like it was the plague. Even if it's not a kids app.

Generally good advice. Play-testing with young kids is a big help.<p>I also don't like an app that has the kid shake the iPad (or iPhone) a lot.<p>I'm torn on the "Don't trick my kids into buying stuff" one. I've seen a lot of crappy apps (and even well-built Smurfy-Smurf ones) that are just funnels to in-app purchases. But I've also seen parents leave outraged reviews because a developer dares to have in-app purchases for additional content in his free app. Or they turn their nose up at paying $1.99 for an iPad app. The world doesn't owe you free high-quality kids' apps. Go ahead and funnel your kid's allowance into iTunes credit now and use it to get them to clean their room.

I develop an educational app geared for kids and just like some of the people here. I dislike ads, in app purchase, external link etc so I made sure that my app doesn't have any of those and price it at $0.99. I keep updating it based on user feedback to make the app better.<p>It's good to read that there are a lot of parent here that say they won't purchase any app with ads and/or inapp purchases for their kids but I think majority of the people don't care.<p>Most of the top 15 apps in my app category/subject are free with ads and/or in app purchases. They can afford to make it free because they make money from ads/in-app purchases and because they're free they get a lot more download that keeps their ranking higher burying app like mine.<p>It's hard to compete in that kind of condition but I for now, I can't see my self using ads/in-app purchases in any of my app. I will try to compete by bringing better qualities apps.

One company that does this exceedingly well, me thinks, is Toca Boca. In a sense, they don't make iPad games, they make iPad toys. But kids respond to the toys, and enjoy them.<p>Slightly unrelated, their CEO has a good talk on the way to figuring out that they should make kids toys: <a href="http://vimeo.com/30743193" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/30743193</a>

I get irked enough when a non-kids app keeps prodding me towards in-app purchases, I'd be pretty livid if I found out a for-kids app was doing it.

I've worked on a children's app for Android where the client wanted advertisements moved from the main screen (where parents would see it) to the content screen (accidental clicks only from children). That change in design made the client "dead to me" especially when they next wanted me to work on another child app where the business model was:<p>Fooling children into initiating SMS charges against the phone.

Also, don't pop up iOS notifications. 2 year olds can't read them and they're hard to dismiss.

A plea to parents purchasing iPad Apps for children:<p>Stop buying apps that do stuff like this.<p>If you see that an app has a $99 in-app berry purchase, don't download or buy it.<p>If you see that an app encourages children to poke and sling animals and destroy things, don't buy it.<p>Do a small bit of research to see if the app was designed with your child's age in mind. Buy apps from trusted sources like <a href="http://tocaboca.com/" rel="nofollow">http://tocaboca.com/</a> , <a href="http://piikeastreet.com" rel="nofollow">http://piikeastreet.com</a> (disclosure:that's me), <a href="http://www.duckduckmoosedesign.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.duckduckmoosedesign.com/</a> , etc.<p>If you buy more of the good stuff, there will be more good stuff to buy!

I disagree slightly with the Affordance Is King point. You should identify the hot spots on the screen, but you should also reward childish exploration. I think <i>most of the screen</i> should be hot. Pretty much everything should be a target, and they should all be big. "Animals For Toddlers" (Eiswuxe) does this well (and is just plan excellent all around, by the way).<p>I also disagree with the advice that arrows are best for pagination; I think he's overgeneralizing. My toddler is great at swipes, and still doesn't use arrows well. Broader testing may be a good idea here, and implementing multiple paradigms might be the answer.<p>The bit about not putting the menu on the bottom of the screen is good, though. The kids apps I have on my (Android) tablet often disable the soft button menu and implement their own elsewhere. Of particular note is the pull-down-from-a-collapsed-bar-at-the-top pattern, which my son seems to know how to not get into. Or at least get out of.<p>And that bit about ads and in-app payments is right on the money. I've bought a few apps for him after seeing he likes the free version, but the ones that result in him launching dating sites get uninstalled fast.

I think this applies to any tablet app. Smart phone apps need to avoid having buttons near my thumb that I can accidentally push.

This is great feedback. Right now I'm trying to finish our first book for <a href="http://non.io" rel="nofollow">http://non.io</a> (site isn't complete yet, but it will still give you an idea of the core concept), and one of my considerations was ensuring that the app was child friendly. At the end of the day, there will be options and components that are for parents only. Ensuring that a.) they're still prominent enough for parents to see at some point, and b.) that they're out of reach of children is a difficult balancing act. Does anyone know of or have any suggestions of apps who have done this correctly? I only have two components that are for parents - a donation form and an email signup form on the last page. Right now they're disabled until you select a checkbox that says "I'm an adult". Would love to get more feedback on this though.

Reminds me of a friend who used to run IT for a school, telling me the feature he looked for in educational software was greying out the 'print' button for 30 seconds after it had been clicked. Otherwise, the scenario was: kid clicks 'print', looks at printer, sees nothing coming out (maybe the printer is out of paper, or warming up, or whatever). So kid just keeps clicking 'print'. Result: when printer finally comes online, it wastes reams of paper printing dozens of copies of the document in the queue.

The in app purchasing on Androids needs to be stopped or at the very least prompt a password entry. I downloaded Bug Village (Glu Mobile) on my Android for my 4 year old son, and about 2 hours later I noticed around $320 on 3 purchases (I think 2 149.99 and 1 19.99 or something around that). I contacted Glu immediately asking for it to be voided/refunded. They told me to contact my bank and charge them back.<p>I hope they enjoyed the chargeback fees. Now nothing gets downloaded with in app purchasing in it.

I would add that kids hold the side of the iPad. So don't count that as a touch.<p>In fact my daughter hasn't figured out to use one finger so if you can hack the touch interface to ignore stray fingers or hands that would be great.<p>Also if you ate presenting some kind of activity that two people could conceivabley do at once eg building blocks, moving shapes around allow two fingers to mover separate objects at once. The same thing with drawing.

To all those who are claiming that the use of iPads will be detrimental to the health of their children. Please read this article: <a href="http://techland.time.com/2012/02/22/new-study-finds-ipads-in-the-classroom-boost-test-scores/" rel="nofollow">http://techland.time.com/2012/02/22/new-study-finds-ipads-in...</a>

Is there a way of stopping accidental taps on the lower part of the screen? Android is bad for this, with back/home buttons in the corner.<p>Perhaps some sort of elasticated non-capacitive fabric barrier wrapped around the device that can be moved when it's needed?

The other aspect of design that needs to be taken into account is the size of the tap area - you don't have to make the buttons huge, but the responsive area should be larger for younger audiences and with more spacing between controls.

The idea that "nagging works" is widely used to craft advertising for children's television (source: The Corporation (film)). Is the march toward such advertising in this nascent children's entertainment medium inexorable?

Great post! The comments about persuasive ads hits home. Another frustration is sales messages on the startup screen. Once a game requires too much parental interaction to back out purchase requests I delete it.

Also, which is better for kids - landscape or portrait? Has anyone seen a preference, or are all the apps landscape?

My only addition is to ask for a band on scroll bars in a kids app, especially on the bottom of the page.

I always asked myself why there isn't a KIDS category in the AppStore.

ipad kills kids' eyes. i buy real books instead.