Tips for Playtesting with Kids
I have recently had the opportunity to come back to what I love most: spending time with children and escalating their wisdom to products for kids. In this post, I wish to share with you some valuable lessons about playtesting I learned along the way.
Needless to say, your first mission is to make kids comfortable around you and explain why you are here, why they are being recorded and who will see the videos (if so), what will be done with the data etc.
So, in no particular order, here we go:
Be ready but improvise! Listen to the children and let them lead.
Leave fully unmoderated activities for the older kids. With younger kids, some amount of adult assistance is often required (varies from minimum at a distance to active presence, depending on the child). Younger children need someone they trust to be present in order to feel safe and comfortable.
Train your observation muscle. My favorite technique, which I was sure I invented (too good to be true), is “What? So what? Now What?” In other words: separating between what I saw, what I thought it meant, and what could be done about it. This approach reduces biases and permits dialogue between team members.
Join kids’ celebrations with an open heart! There is never enough of silly dancing, repetition and laughs! Take your time celebrating and when you think you are done, provoke some more.
“Over the shoulder “recording method works! I have never recorded sessions before, so still having doubts, I tried this widely used method. Luckily, there are resources you can refer to for help! As it turned out, it worked like magic! Kids stopped paying attention to the camera soon after they started playing.
Prefer quantity over perfectionism. You want to be able to do as many sessions as you need easily. Don’t worry about perfection; the key is that it should be easy to execute.
Don’t let the insights stay in your head or in the drawer. Find a way to create a cumulative knowledge base. For me, the Atomic research approach makes sense and I am in the middle of applying it for the first time. Its effectiveness will be seen after a few more projects that we will, hopefully, be able to reuse and cross-reference in order to create new insights. If you know how to make it less time-consuming, please let me know!
Storytelling. Guess what? Researchers tell stories, too. We connect to kids and parents through storytelling and capture insights in stories so that they will hopefully be readable, read, and applied. The stories need to be attractive and well-written. And we must remember that these are just stories. UX research is not academic research. We, UX researchers, serve people (in our case, children), not truth and accuracy. This can sometimes be a disadvantage, but it is mostly our strength.
Almost last and probably most important: keep children's rights in mind in everything you do! Intentions matter. Once you have it, you’ll figure out your answers and find out how to serve children with your work. There is no one accepted standard/ textbook/bible (yet) on how to do UX research with kids. Challenges constantly arise and the best thing is to look for the most ethical and child-oriented approaches (for example, check D4CR guidelines, ICO age-appropriate design code, follow 5Rights Foundation and more). You’ll do better with time and you are welcome to copy me and surround yourself with like-minded friends and colleagues, join communities, volunteer and take action to contribute to the global effort in including children and making their voices heard.
And please, be tough/resilient/brave enough to admit that you may not have all the answers, or even not all the most interesting questions, yet. Despite what you might think, applying curiosity and a beginner's mindset makes you better at what you do and hopefully stronger in the eyes of the workplace.
This experience opened my appetite for more work with kids on different levels. I’d be thrilled to do more co-creation with kids and share with you how I perfect my practices so that you can improve yours.
If you want to invite me over for consultation or freelance help, please don’t be shy!
Happy playtesting,
Polina