Imagine a brilliant yet egocentric group of people with highly
established social hierarchies, fickle brand affinities, a
strong sense of right and wrong, limited powers of deduction,
and more creativity than you can possibly comprehend. Now
imagine that you have to design a digital experience for these
folks that they’ll not only be able to use, but frequent,
praise, evangelize, and maybe even help build. Oh, yeah, and
most of these people can’t read. Welcome to the wild and
wonderful world of designing for kids. How is designing for kids
different from designing for adults? Concrete vs Abstract: Kids,
specifically kids ages 7-11, are in what Piaget called the
“concrete operational phase.” At this stage, kids understand
concrete events, but are still struggling with abstract
concepts. As a result, they look for concrete “proof” in their
digital interactions. They see every item on the screen as a
possibility for interaction. For example, kids will click or
touch everything they see in a digital experience ju