This is just a quick post but it only scratches the surface of my interest in this subject. In a nutshell, I was never very good at maths at school. I liked what it did, just couldn’t really get my head around some of the deeper concepts. I got a C at O-level and then dropped out of A-Level maths in the first 2 weeks.

Then I became a proper multimedia developer back in 1994, making games, websites and the like. Maths was my friend but I did it in a very organic way. I worked out how to write my own physics engine for a pinball game by drawing lots of angles in countless sketch pads… and chatting through the problems with my friend Jop. I got there in the end. Have a go at the game here. Most ‘hardcore’ developers wouldn’t even attempt it. I’m still not sure if that makes me smart or stupid. It did make me proud though. I showed the ‘clever types’ what someone who barely passed their maths exam could do.

My mission is to inspire kids to see the beauty, the fun and more importantly, the simplicity of maths. Nobody took the time when I was at school. We all have an inspirational teacher from our past that got us to invest that little bit extra by injecting their own passion into their lessons. If they don’t exist, I’ll have to do it for them!

Earlier in the year I started a series of simple modules to show how cool maths can be by showing how games use snippets of maths. And something games developers do very well is cheat with maths. Sure there are complicated equations for gravity, but Mario doesn’t use any of them. He just uses simple addition to do all that jumping around. It’s surprisingly easy when you know how… and shows how, with a bit of confidence, you can bend the rules a bit and ‘do maths’ in a very creative way. It’s problem solving at it’s best and when you use something like Flash, you SEE the results.

I’ll post more when I actually get my arse into gear and present to a local school (I have one lined up). My recent job change has deflected my focus of late. But now I’m back on my mission.

In the meantime, just noticed Quest to Learn, a fantastic initiative in New York. An entire school based around gaming. There’s a great article about them here to give you a quick overview.

Watch this space…

I wondered how long it would take for someone to start charging for those rubber bands postal workers litter our streets with! Welcome to Silly Bandz.

Hadn’t heard of them until today but Silly Bandz have taken the US by storm. Essentially, just simple outlines made of thin rubber that you can stretch and wear as a wristband or bracelet. It’s not often I know about this kind of thing before my 9 year old daughter so I’m curious to know when it emerges on her radar. Interestingly, my 7 year old son’s “girlfriends’ have them apparently.

I give it 2 months until all the cool kids in the office have them draped over their Hoxton fixie bike baskets.

Now even though I say this myself, I have a really cool day job. I make games, I think of mad ideas, I get to sit in pink rooms with AstroTurf and beanbags, play with iPads and I can get to visit some very cool paces. I’ll save the story about the chat I had with Cameron Diaz in Beverly Hills about my socks for another day, but you get the point.

In the eyes of my kids (and to be fair, most of their mates too) I actually have the coolest job in the entire widest world, ever. Of course, I keep all the dull bits quite and concentrate on the good bits they like to hear about. My existence is spent doing the normal humdrum life stuff waiting for the next cool thing I can impress kids with”. I understand that as soon as my kids reach 13, I’ll be the most annoying, uncool and saddo dad, like, evaaaar! So I’m enjoying the run while it lasts. And today was one of those days when a cool thing happened.

How it happened
Friend, entrepreneur and “mummy blogger” Janis Curry, the brains behind ReallyKidfriendly.com kindly invited me as a +1 to a visit to the head quarters of Moshi Monsters, the kid friendly, monster-themed virtual world for kids. Clearly, this would have major kudos points for my Moshi Monster obsessed offspring so of course I jumped at the chance… and bonus… my 6-year-old son was invited too. I don’t know who was most excited.

A typical scene. mooching up and down the shopping district.

Moshi Monsters in a nutshell
If you’re not sure what Moshi Monsters is, let me do an “in a nutshell” overview. Essentially it’s a fun virtual world where you adopt and nurture cute little monsters. You play games, walk around, meet other monsters (safely!), plant seeds in the garden and also earn Rox (the local currency). You can spend your Rox on little Moshlings (sidekicks), decking out your pad and so on. Much of it is free but there are premium accounts available for monthly, 6 monthly or yearly subscriptions. It’s safe, moderated and the games aim to have an invisible undertone of education, undetectable to the kids but welcomed by parents. Got it? Good… let’s continue.

There's a lot to do... but lots more will be unlocked soon.

Behind the scenes
The offices of Mind Candy, the company behind Moshi Monsters are pretty unassuming from the outside, and from the inside to be honest but big things are afoot and a move to bigger, better and no doubt funkier offices in Shorditch are planned later in the year. Katsuma will be sporting a Hoxton quiff and riding a fixie before you know it.

Once inside, we were ushered into one of those room filled with Moshi Monster paraphernalia, not to mention sweets and dare I say it, a beanbag. We met Andy Matjaszek (Global Product Marketing Manager) and Ed Relf (Chief Marketing Manager) and the assembled kids tucked into healthy snacks and played on the Moshi Monsters site. Meanwhile, the grown-ups listened to head honcho Michael Acton-Smith (CEO) explain the origins and future plans for Moshi Monsters. The Q&A session brought up some interesting tid bits which I will share below but the overall impression seeping through every answer was that the guys behind Moshi Monsters are doing it for all the right reasons. Success has not been at the expense of values (like keeping children safe and entertained) and has also afforded them the space to explore only the opportunities that feed kids enjoyment of the Moshi Monsters brand itself. You won’t find big ads for Sunny Delight on Moshi, likewise, you won’t find mindless shoot-em-up games or free-form chat rooms on their too. “Education by stealth” as Michael put it.

Games are fun with subtle emphasis on learning along the way.

Of course, the inevitable comparison to Club Penguin (and indeed Webkins) came up but the resounding response was “There’s room for all of us”. Moshi Monsters arguably has more traction than Club Penguin with parents and teachers because of it’s smarter approach to games and activities.

TV ads still work
One of Michael’s slides showed the ubiquitous ‘growth curve’ with a fairly significant upward bend in it somewhere around last summer. When asked about it, the culprit was simple… TV advertising. It’s really interesting to see this time and time again. Online is fantastic at deep engagement for kids. TV is fantastic for awareness. Mix the two together and good things happen (assuming the online element lives up to the advert). There was, of course, a full media plan behind this meteoric rise, including outdoor, digital, press and the usual suspects but TV was the main pltform when it comes to introducing a new brand to kids. It certainly worked for my kids. Club Penguin was unceremoniously dumped in favour of Moshi Monsters a few months back, roughly the same time that the Moshi Monster aired on Disney XD.

What else?
So what other news is there from Moshi Monsters?

• Yes there will be the ubiquitous trading cards. The finer details are top secret (and I’d have to kill you etc.) but looked really good. Game mechanic and scoring is simple and will be well known to fans of trading cards. They will feature a huge variety of new monsters, many appealing to a wry sense of humour
• The ‘undeveloped’ areas of the Moshi Monsters world are being developed as we speak. an example is the ‘Goo-genheim’ art gallery and museum to showcase all the art and creativity kids send in.
• There are discussions for iPhone apps, a web TV series and toys to name but a few. Each one seemed carefully scrutinised to uphold the morals and valued of the Moshi Monster ethos.
• One resourceful teacher even used Moshi as a basis for inspiring her class to create puzzles and invent items for a home-made Moshi Monsters shop.
• Moshi Monsters is currently kept running by about 35 staff. But big expansion plans are coming.
• For those of you from the digital agency / game dev  background, you may be interested to know Mind Candy run a fully Agile Scrum system with an entire wall filled with postits tracking the various projects. Very impressive to see in action.

Fun facts
Some fun facts from Moshi Monsters

• A new child signs up to Moshi Monster every second.
• The first monster Michael sketched was called Chico (pictured below)
• 75% of the Moshi Monsters audience are between 6 and 12 years old.
• There is a 60/40 girl/boy split but this is heading more towards 50/50.
• CEO Michael Acton-Smith’s own Moshi Monster is called MrMoshi

The origin of the Moshi Monster empire... say hello to Chico.

Get the crayons out
The day was topped off with a tour of the studio an appearance from Trevor White (illustrator and concept artist) who did a valiant attempt at trying to teach the assembled grown-ups and kids how to draw Katsuma, one of the Moshi Monsters. Nice touch. The guys at Aardman Studios do a similar thing and in a way, the Mind Candy crew have a very similar vibe to the Aardman folks down in Bristol. They are passionate about their craft, have been successful enough to keep hold of the creative reins and when all’s said and done, what they make does the talking… and speaks volumes.

Trevor teaching a little monster how to draw a little monster

And it gets better
And if all that excitement wasn’t enough, we were issued with several bags of Moshi Monster goodies for the kids. I won’t tell you what was in them but rest assured, I secretly wished I had one too! But on reflection, I’m not that worried about the goody bag (ish), I just had another cool moment to impress my kid’s friends with. That’ll keep me going for a few weeks at least!

I’ll be watching the new adventures of Mind Candy and Moshi Monsters with interest. The next 12 months sounds like a very exciting time both for the Moshi Monster world and it’s audience of little monsters.

If you’ve not been to Mosh Monsters… pull yourself together… go there now. And if you’re lucky, your friend’s kids will think your cool.

My scribbled idea started with the notion of “where do computer viruses eat and drink in such a harsh digital world?”. A quick look around the room later… bubblejet printer ink! I loved the idea that these devices act as savana-style watering holes for online lifeforms. What if you could tell when a critter was visiting your house and could do battle with it? What if you beat it and it fell under the printer’s rollers and out popped a printed sheet complete with squashed critter.

As they say… Zoikz was born (after the usual URL check!)

Then comes the Digital Outlook magic. With the idea whipped into shape with Angus Fletcher, RDF, Miniclip and Egmont all wanted in. For our part, launching it was simple. Zoikz was mainly targetted at 8-12yr old boys so a game on Miniclip would be a fantastic launch strategy to start building awareness. Egmont are the worlds largest publisher and also publish Toxic magazine targetted at 6-12yr old boys. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they ran a full page add on the same day as Miniclip launched a Zoikz game? Wouldn’t it be even more awesome if they ran a full page for the first 6 weeks then published a proper Zoikz cartoon? Well, that’s exactly why Tuesday was a big day… as that’s what happened!

I’m currently away from my PC and only have a restricted iPhone browser (insert rant about Apple / Flash here) so I haven’t actually seen it. Very annoying but very cool at the same time.

PLAY IT on Miniclip here.
Print out your cheat sheet then visit the minisite to see a Zoik in Augmented Reality 3D on Zoikz.com.
VISIT the microsite here.

Check out the article in NMA for a bit of name-checking.

Please DO let me know what you think. It’s really at its initial phase and although we have ideas, I would love to hear where you would like it to go.

In a world where ‘lol’ is used every other sentence, this was a genuine, real, proper lol moment. Didn’t think they actually existed these days. Possibly could have turned into a lmao with a few beers on the go. The proximity of chair prevented a rofl.

Now go and do it yourself.

Just placed a couple of games for Jetix on Freeloader (Jimmy Two-Shows and Kid v’s Kat) and got me thinking of the various ways clients can get kids content out there. Trying to get ‘more bang for your buck’ has always been the mantra at small, nimble digital agencies, and with budgets being squeezed, it’s never more true… or needed. There are still the big ‘full service’ giants that go into auto-pilot and fill their media buying spreadsheet with banners and basic media creative placements.

There’s definitely a sliding scale when it comes to being clever and it seems to go something like this.

Brief: Our kids website has everything on it but we need more hits. Help!

Here are a few solution (in order of cleverness)

1) Run a competition to win a Playstation on the site (of course, only the audience already there will see it)
[PRICE 3/10] [EFFECTIVENESS 2/10]

2) Run a basic banner campaign wherever a quick Nielsen report says your audience are. That’s Yahoo, MSN Today, Google, Disney and the BBC Homepage (and we all know how many 8 year olds use MSN Today)
[PRICE 4/10] [EFFECTIVENESS 3/10]

3) Run a basic banner campaign where your audience actually are. That’s Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Miniclip and CiTV (better, but on these content rich sites, can be hard for banners to stand out)
[PRICE 4/10] [EFFECTIVENESS 4/10]

4) Run ‘in banner games’, probably in MPU formats where your audience actually are. See above. (Much better result on the media placement than a standard banner. As long as the “play game” message is clear)
[PRICE 5/10] [EFFECTIVENESS 6/10]

5) Run an integrated promotion on highly trafficked a site that actually engages your audience. Support it with tools and content that makes their lives better. Maybe an upgrade to an existing avatar maker or a chance to be famous. (Giving your audience tools to enhance the experience they already value is the key point)
[PRICE 6/10] [EFFECTIVENESS 6/10]

6) Rip the good games from your client’s site and get them placed on highly trafficked (and mostly free) game sites. Freeloader, Addicting Games, Shockwave etc. (every kid likes games. These sites may be crowded, but they are popular. Hard to target a certain age or country though)
[PRICE 3/10] [EFFECTIVENESS 7/10]

7) Create a bespoke game a put it on Miniclip (known for high quality content and trusted. Not cheap to place a game but the numbers usually stack up. Sometimes double figure click-throughs and engagement times of over 10 minutes)
[PRICE 9/10] [EFFECTIVENESS 9/10]

Some take a fair while to build momentum. Some (banners) will die as soon as they stop running. Some, like Miniclip come on instantly with big numbers, so you’d better be ready to deal with them.

However it’s done, main point is to be certain of your end goal (or “what success looks like”) and to know EXACTLY who your audience is. Don’t assume it’s kids when it may well be parents that decide for them you need to reach. Use stats. Know what the new formats are. Know what the innovative new ‘cool things’ are. Know what the various creative delivery platforms are launching next. Know what partner sites want to achieve and try and help them achieve it, they may give you more promotion. And lastly, know where your audience actually is. I despair at Nielsen ratings and Net Promoter scores. They are wildly inaccurate for the kids market as they seem to include a fair amount of their parent’s activity too, so need to be backed up with a pinch of common sense.

Over the next few months, we (Digital Outlook) has a few varied and cunning marketing strategies in the kids space, so it’s a good chance to see how they perform against each other. Always keen to find new ways… as long as they hit target head-on. Will keep you posted.

About a year ago, we had a tricky brief. Make a website for kids without a brand, any content or characters… but make it promote a show coming up soon… which you can’t mention. Hmmm… easy peasy.

Turns out the show in question was the new Famous 5 On the Case, a new take on the Enid Blyton series of books. Our solution was to ‘live the values’ of the Famous 5 but creating a site for kids to share their survival skills, whether country or city based. It was also aimed at grown ups with the intention of them passing down their hard-earned knowledge to the next generation. How to shine a coin with a lemon? How do you chain your bike up properly? How do you make a boomerang from lolly sticks? The answer to these questions would be be answered. Everyone knew it was a tough brief and were actually rather amazed that there was a solution at all. All go so far.

We set about scoping, considered a big tech build but found a number of off-the-peg content sharing and UGC (user generated content) products. We hired a company, created “Secret Skillz.com”, got all the people we know to make some initial videos, upload them, sat back… and waited.

And waited. The avalanche of video entries never really materialised. A year on, the site has eventually made way for the official Famous 5 microsite and the lessons have been filed under “Great idea, just didn’t work”.

Essentially,

• The lack of a cool brand meant there was no kudos in being seen on this site
• There was no real reward for uploading, therefore no incentive to upload
• Kids don’t really have access to all the kit and equipment to make the videos
• Kids don’t really upload videos. It’s just not really allowed. And parents can’t be bothered
• The ‘off-the-shelf’ product was actually fairly expensive once monthly charges were added
• We should have tested the broad concept WAY earlier on real kids
• If there’s a glaring ‘untapped niche’, there’s probably a reason. Kids UCG is one of them

What WAS important is that without taking a risk now and again, the web would be a very dull place. Ok, so this one may not have worked quite as everyone hoped, but the next solution will be much better for it. We were open and honest at all times and it’s just one of those things. Learn, move on. At least we tried and at least it wasn’t a dull, safe banner campaign. And some of the videos made it onto the new Famous 5 site, so it wasn’t all wasted. Here’s me cutting an apple without an knife and making a Monkey Fist rope ball. I clearly have no shame…

[ http://www.whattheyplay.com ]

As the header says, it’s aiming to be “The parents guide to video games”. Ok, if it was me I’d have capitalised the ‘THE” but there you go.

Anyway, some great articles on there. Lots of ‘Get the facts’ bluffers guides to popular technologies or platforms as well as links to reports on kids gaming and trends. There are several console categories, a blog and a bunch of interesting articles. Strange they don’t have a ‘web games’ section though given that likes of Miniclip are hugely influential in this space.

Here are some example articles worth a quick scan…

• Parents More Concerned About Video Games than Alcohol or Pornography
• Are You or Your Kids “Extreme Gamers”?
• Miniclip: Get the Facts
• What is WiiWare?
• Kongregate: Get the Facts
• Webkinz: Get The Facts

Needless to say, I’ve signed up to the newsletter, so I expect my spam folder to be a little heavier this month before I figure out where it went.

I was asked to talk at an NMK (New Media Knowledge) a year or so ago on the subject of creating digital content for kids. That lovely organic proliferation thing happened and my ‘top 10 tips’ got syndicated around the web. Don’t get me wrong, that’s brilliant and thank you to whoever posted it first, hopefully it helped the odd lost soul searching for a quick tip or two. However, I couldn’t help thinking it was the tip of the iceberg. It peaked unexpectedly soon. I’d much rather give as much as possible than a simple, bite-sized ‘top 10′.

I’ve been creating kids focused interactive content since 1993 so, political correctness aside, I know a thing or two about the subject. As a freelancer, this was my secret weapon. My secret stash. My heirloom almost. At my previous job, my title was a bit made up, but nonetheless read “Head of Creative Technology’ for Jetix (the kids TV broadcaster). So I’d also had fair exposure to the inside scoop of a ferociously commercial broadcaster. Ok, I’d worked for the BBC for a few years on and off but the experience out there in the multi-channel, win-at-all-cost world of commercial TV was invaluable. My job was primarily to service the brands that advertised on the TV channel. Creating ‘joined-up’ projects that drove TV audience to the web site to continue their relationship… and vice versa. Whether it be Power Rangers, Action Man, Nintendo, Playstation, McDonalds or a big movie release, you name it, I probably did a game, a microsite or a competition for it.

I also dabbled in interactive TV on both the Sky and Liberate platform, mobile services, multi-player engines, research platforms and consumer products. All in all, a great place to learn.

Luckily, when I left Jetix, I had the presence of mind to make a note of what was buzzing through my mind at the time. It’s not the be-all-and-end-all of kids’ design online and some of it is probably old fashioned after only 3 years (note the lack of social networking and dvirtual worlds!) but it’s still a fairly good primer for anyone in the kids interactive space. So here goes, hope it helps…

Download as a Word document here.

Tips for creating kids web sites

What are the main usability concerns that come up when designing sites for kids?
Kids are a hard bunch. They are unpredictable and fickle, loyal yet can be disloyal, easy to attract yet easily distracted, they’re honest but would be the first to try and hack a highscore table if there was a PSP up for grabs. Assume at your peril.

Here are some quick tips:
•    Call to action! This is crucial. Don’t even think of getting on your high-horse and refusing to write ‘Click Here’. You’ll get vastly better clickthrough figures if you tell kids what to do. A big, red, throbbing button with ‘Free games!’ written on it is going to get a lot of use!
•    The three no-brainer content ideas are games, free stuff and cool brands. Any of them in isolation work, but get all three and you’re rocking. Play this wicked game, get to level 3 and win an Xbox 360! Job done.
•    Kids are prone to change the way they use web content depending on their viewing environment. A boy in a competitive class environment is very different from a boy at home. Know your target audience!
•    Text isn’t read by kids. Even short intros are skipped if there’s a ‘WIN STUFF’ button nearby. Keep text short and big.
•    Tone of voice is crucial. Too adult or authoritative and you’ll loose them. Too obviously ‘kool’ and you’ll be rumbled within seconds. If you don’t know the top 5 swearwords and cool phrases of the moment, consider getting a kid specific copywriter in.
•    Say to yourself what the page is trying to do, as though explaining it to your mum, keeping it simple and non-patronising. Those words are usually the ones that should be on the page.
•    Keep the eye-journey simple. The old top-left to bottom-right is usually a good place to start.
•    Consider your competition prizes carefully. A ps2 may still sound cool to us but there will be a thousand competitions on the web that day to win one too. Money-can’t-buy or quirky prizes can often be cheaper and more effective. Walkie talkies, mobiles, win your weight in chocolate, adopting a hedgehog, even the trade promo stuff you chuck away could be exciting to a kid.
•    Kids also love secrets or being in possession of content that give them playground status. This can take the form of collecting points, joining an online community or a simple printout.
•    Data Protection and privacy laws are there for a reason, so be very wary of any idea that involves gaining personally identifiable data from a kid. It’s a huge subject but in general, always try and get their parents permission, never let them upload content to a live site without moderation (highscore names, images, comments etc.) and keep any requested data simple.
•    Don’t agonise about the finer details of the design. Kids will just go for the cool content anyway, regardless of what surrounds it. Having said that, it’s often the silly, quirky extras you slip in that make all the difference. Fart noises on buttons, hidden items, cool cursor effects, draggable stuff and so on.
•    Help them at all times. If kids get confused, they loose interest very quickly and will never come back. If you need to drag something to start a game, use a big flashing arrow with ‘Drag this!’ on it. Reducing confusion should not be underestimated.
•    Don’t assume kids use computers the same way as you do. Most kids only check their email a couple of times a week. They see their mates at school every day! So think before you launch into that email based viral for 5 year-olds. Parents are also wary of their kids being unsupervised on the web and use isn’t as freely available as we assume. Kids also have consoles for games, so there are a lot of reasons Mum and Dad’s cranky old computer won’t be the first thing they turn on after school. Bear this in mind!
•    Help I’m lost! A simple mental map of where they are in a site is vital. If possible, display where they are and allow them you retrace their steps.
•    Don’t assume they know all the conventions like clicking the logo to go to the homepage or two vertical bars mean pause.
•    Avoid including a web based feedback form if you can help it. You’ll get bombarded with anonymous and annoying drivel. It’s nasty, but a ‘Mailto’ that fires up the kids email app really makes them think as it’s not anonymous any more.
•    If you are working across many countries, make sure you are aware of local laws relating to kids privacy and competition laws.
•    Be aware that some parents would prefer their kids to learn something while browsing the web. If you can make your site educational as well as entertaining, you’ll have a powerful weapon to win over the parents too. Often they are the gatekeepers to internet use for the younger kids, so having them on side will make repeat visits more likely.
•    Kids like to pretend they are older than they are. It’s better to be apparitional and slightly out of reach the to pitch it too young and be condescending.

What do you aim for in “look and feel” terms?
•    Don’t go sophisticated. Think blunt, bold and colourful.
•    Loads of movement is good but make sure the thing you want them to click moves more.
•    Make buttons look pressible. Drop shadows and highlights help to make buttons look 3d and pressible.
•    Big strong call to actions are king.
•    Lots of pictures and reduce text to a minimum where possible.

How does the process of generating content differ from creating “regular” sites?
•    The process isn’t any different but the ideas that you come up with need to take account of usage habits and legal restraints.
•    Do you really need that highscore table? What if a kid puts their mobile number in? There are plenty of ways to maintain the challenge of a highscore system without resorting to a standard database model. This example is true of many things we take for granted like competition forms, email a mate or uploading your photo.
•    Pay-off or rewards are more important than for adult sites. A simple ‘Game Over’ isn’t ideal. If they put the effort in to complete a game, the reward should be worth it.

Is it fair to say that you can you be more experimental with children’s sites? Can you get away with more animation, video, sound for example?
•    Not really, but it depends on what your non-children’s sites are. Digital Outlook concentrates on the entertainment sector, with a large focus on film sites, so innovation and wacky concepts are always welcome.
•    In certain areas, you have to be less experimental to avoid diluting the message. Messing about in a 3D contextual navigation sphere may sound cool but kids just want the cool/free stuff… Now!

Do you think children are generally more technically savvy than their parents?
•    In general yes, but only because they have less inhibitions to trying and failing. Grown-ups are more wary of just clicking stuff to see what happens as life has taught them that it could bite. I’ve never pressed the mysterious orange button on my washing machine for exactly that reason. My 2 year old son had pressed it hundreds of times. Kids are encouraged to learn by experimenting and so are better placed to discover and therefore learn from new experiences.

Are kid’s sites more interactive than sites for grown-ups? More experience lead than information lead?
•    Again, it depends on you sector and other work, but in general there need to be more whiz-bang buttons and games on kids sites to keep them entertained for longer.
•    Having said that, some grown-up sites are super-interactive. Look at Google Earth! The amount of interactivity is not the issue, it the style you use that can be perceived as more kids or adult focused.
•    Again, experience or information sites have their equivalents in the kid and adult world. Anyone into Pokémon or Digimon will know the vast amount of information kids can hold and they spend hours on sites learning the relative merits of a Bone Club attack over a Bubblebeam. Likewise, film sites for grown-ups are almost entirely experience lead.

What kinds of research do you perform before and after building sites aimed at children?
•    If it’s your first site, arrange to go to a school or playgroup and take in a CD Rom of something similar. Watch how some kids take control while some have never used a mouse before. It’ll be an eye opener and you’ll soon drop a lot of the arty-farty designer stuff you’ve held dear for so long. This is where it gets raw…
•    Check out other sites in the same areas. Buy a couple of magazines aimed at your target market. Ask friends or family.
•    We always test everything before it goes live. Er, let’s be honest, we haven’t always got time, it’s expensive and is unnecessary in many cases. You’re experience should start to remove the need for some testing once you’ve learnt the hard way, but it’s extremely useful to do a testing session a couple of times a year to keep your assumptions realistic.
•    Some clients (the Government for instance) insist on it. Try to go along or at the very least, sit down with the testers. A report is useful but you often get the underlying human story from the people that were there.
•    You don’t have to like kids to create web sites for them, but it helps! However, you do need to think like a kid to make it a fun and fulfilling area to work in. If you don’t have empathy or a social connection, you’ll struggle to come up with ideas that deliver what a kids actually wants.

Have you consulted with educational specialists or child psychologists in the course of building sites for kids? What kind of advice did they give?
•    Again, they are very useful at the beginning of your career and handy to pop in on now and again, but in most cases experience, client knowledge and common sense can see you through most projects. But not using one at any point and assuming you know what you’re going is not an option! It’s also important you not only listen to the advice but understand it before you put it into practice.
•    If you are doing a specifically educational project, then you have to be aware of the educational needs of kids at key stages in their education. Knowing the limits of a 4 year old and a 6 year old are essential in a maths puzzle.
•    The advise they give is way too important and fundamental to the way you approach kids content to cover here but has remained basically consistent over the past 15 years, so be realistic about keeping up to date. Definitely subscribe to kids industry publications like Kidscreen but don’t concentrate too much on the science. Following trends on the street is often more relevant than following rules.

Are there any specific legal concerns when building for kids? The COPPA legislation in the States comes to mind?
•    These points are copied from above…
•    Data Protection and privacy laws are there for a reason, so be very wary of any idea that involves gaining personally identifiable data from a kid. It’s a huge subject but in general, always try and get their parents permission, never let them upload content to a live site without moderation (highscore names, images, comments etc.) and keep any requested data simple.
•    If you are working across many countries, make sure you are aware of local laws relating to kids privacy and competition laws.

Are there any differences in cost between kid sites and sites aimed at a general audience?
•    No. Often a general audience sites is more expensive to finalise as you have a wider range of feedback to take into account. With kids sites, you have a smaller but more focused audience, so the potential for wildly varying feedback is hopefully reduced.

Download as a Word document here.