It’s fun designing for kids. After leading the UX and interface design of Speak Agent, a vocabulary learning web app for kids a couple of years ago, I learned a lot about how different kids can act even within a one or two year difference in age. A number of my “learnings” jibed with yours in terms of encouragement and feedback. I nodded in recognition of the challenge of hiding the parental settings, and accounting for a child’s inactivity. At a certain age, kids just don’t want to risk being “wrong” so they hesitate to interact. Once our user testing uncovered that issue, we designed a fun help “monster” who popped up to encourage play.

Thanks for sharing, Nadav.