[Sigia-l] kids + paper prototype testing

[Tammie Hutto Egloff]

Hello Katherine, 

I have used both paper prototypes and high fidelity prototypes with 5-7 year
olds. Both worked well. What I found is that, with paper, they would tell me
stories about the software, similar to the way they describe pictures that
they draw. While looking at these wireframes, they tended to give me really
good, "imaginative" feedback for features they'd like to see. However, when I
had them on the high fidelity prototype, they gave more specific feedback
based on certain interactions. 

Recently, I did some interviews with 11-12 year olds. We did not use paper
prototypes, but again I found that when we spoke to the children away from the
actual software, the feedback was more imaginative about "what could it do;"
and, once we were actually looking at the software, they became much more
specific about how they'd like the software to behave or how the UI should
look.

Hopefully this helps.  Interviews with kids can take more imagination and
patience, but its really a lot of fun when you get into it. One thing to be
careful about is how much help you give them. I found much harder to watch the
children struggle with using software than adults. So, I set up some very
specific rules for when and how I help them during the usability testing. This
way, I controlled my urge to guide them too much.

Good luck!

Tammie Hutto Egloff
Human Factors Engineer
Elsevier
t.egloff at elsevier.com


------ Original Message ------
Received: Tue, 23 May 2006 12:57:12 PM CDT
From: "katherine lumb" <katherine.lumb at gmail.com>
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] kids + paper prototype testing

> Anyone have any experience with kids and paper protoype testing? Do
> kids (specifically 9-12 year olds) understand and relate to more
> informal testing artifacts -- like wireframes -- as well as  more
> hi-fidelity artifacts like comps?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Katherine K. Lumb
> Creative Experience Director
> Publicis Dialog
> 212/279-5281
> katherine.lumb at publicis-usa.com
> 
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