Children’s UX: Things to Consider When Designing for Children

Magnus Lundström
5 min readDec 7, 2022

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Designing UX for children isn’t as easy as you might think. There is more to it than adding color and significant design elements to keep their attention and make interacting with the buttons and options easier.

You need to know the difference between UX design for adults and children. Understanding the differences and why they are necessary will help you create better designs that will be successful. Knowing what will work, what won’t, and why is essential for all UX designers.

This article will look at UX design for children and how you can create UX designs for products that children will want to use. If you haven’t designed UX for children before, we are here to help.

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Understanding The Difference In UX Needs

It is more challenging to design UX for children as they will need more support when they use a product. Designers need to understand the differences and what design changes will be required because of the differences.

Cognitive Differences

If you want to design a UX for children, you need to know the cognitive differences between adults and children. If you’ve only been designing products for adults, you need to think about this before starting the UX design process.

You need to know how to keep their attention. They will get distracted and bored faster, and you need to think about how your UX design will stop this from happening. Will they be shown animations and need to interact with the app frequently? How will you make this work? These questions need to be thought about.

Think about the age of the target users, will your UX design for children work for children of all ages? Understand the differences between how the user will interact with the app and what they find engaging.

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Being Transparent

When designing a UX for children, you need to be transparent about what happens when the product is being used. If you haven’t done this before, you can hire a UX design consultants use their user experience design services to support you with this in the design process.

Children will have more difficulty distinguishing the product’s content and advertisements. It would help if you clarified this so they don’t do anything they shouldn’t.

Similarities In UX Design

Some similarities need to remain in the UX design, whether you are designing for children or adults. These similarities help improve the user experience for both groups.

Consistency

Both groups of users want consistency in the products they are using. This will help make the design intuitive, so they won’t have difficulty understanding how to use the product. Consistency is one of the main principles of design, and it should be followed in every design. Every user cares about this, and every designer needs to.

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Know Age Groups

Children develop fast, and the needs of a 5-year-old are different than a 9-year-old. You must understand your target users and create a UX design for them. Before starting the design, you need to know the exact age group. This will help your design and product give users a better user experience.

Keep The Product Simple

No one wants the product to be complicated. Designers need to remove all the design elements and features the product doesn’t need. Don’t clutter the product with elements that your target users will not use.

To find out what isn’t being used, you can research how the product is being used. Identify the features that aren’t used frequently or not at all. Can you remove these features? How will it affect the user experience? This is why you need to understand your product’s users and give them the best user experience.

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How To Create UX Design For Children

Choose The Right Color Palette

You need to think about the color palette carefully. Why are you using those colors? Color is important in design for adults and children, and you must choose the right ones.

Readable Fonts

The fonts that you choose need to be readable. They should contrast with the background and be large enough to read easily. The product users should be able to read the content easily. Use competition research and feedback to find the right font and font size.

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Intuitiveness

The design of your product needs to be intuitive. This should be the focus of your product’s design. Think about how easy it is to use the product, how the users will interact with it, the age of the users, and what knowledge they have.

Don’t create new types of designs if you don’t need to. Follow and use the standard design principles. Other designers use these because they work and are easy to use. Keeping the design familiar will reduce the amount of learning the users will need to do before they can use your product.

Conclusion

More children are using digital products than before, and you need to ensure your product is intuitive for them. There are many things to think about when designing UX for children, and it can be challenging if you haven’t designed this type of product before.

– Thanks for reading!

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