Timeline for Should software for 8 to 14 year olds be colourful and "childish"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
29 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 12, 2023 at 16:11 | comment | converted from answer | user169299 | As a regular user of the site, whenever I want to pull it up to work on any personal project of mine, many of which design projects which I have been working on for several months or years, I try to hide my screen, to hide the childish-looking program, and from embarrassment. The engine is more than capable of complex design and coding, which is why it upsets me, seeing all of it's exaggeratedly childish formats slapping me in the face. I get extremely self-conscience whenever I try pulling it up, and often zoom in on the screen to hide some of it. I can't wait for the day that the developers | |
| May 11, 2021 at 8:48 | comment | added | drabsv | Straying away from the actual question, I find this statement: "these colours form a very clear visual hierarchy" to be quite untrue. Colours by themselves cannot create visual hierarchy, their individual properties can (brightness, saturation, etc). I would expect that use of colours to confuse children, rather than facilitate them. A good example where sparing use of colours, coupled with clear visual hierarchy makes it easy to grasp the logic of programs is the Robotask visual macro editor. | |
| Nov 29, 2016 at 19:52 | answer | added | Juan Lanus | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jul 19, 2016 at 21:26 | comment | added | jackiemb | Interesting question. 'Color Psychology' does seem to be emerging as a field, although there doesn't seem to be any truly relevant research applying it to software specifically, let alone for children. I'd be tempted to do a competitor analysis of colour schemes on popular digital products for that age range, to start off with. If you had a lot of time and resource, do multi-variant testing. | |
| Jul 19, 2016 at 15:37 | answer | added | Mircea | timeline score: 1 | |
| May 18, 2016 at 22:21 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | Are all 8-14 year olds the same? Treating that entire age block as your target user is a fundamentally flawed approach, I suspect. Tweens who are techies or interested in computer technology seems to be who would use this, and that's a very different person than an "average" tween. So, maybe focus on what that user would want. | |
| May 18, 2016 at 20:20 | comment | added | ErikE | Those colors are a violent assault on my eyes. Far too vivid. And why not use a grey for "normal" statements? No need for every single color to be so bold. Ouch. | |
| May 18, 2016 at 18:30 | comment | added | Pavel | I'm thirty and I love the childish style! If only I could get my Visual Studio show the dotnets like this... | |
| May 18, 2016 at 11:14 | comment | added | Kickstart | 2 minor points. I think colouring (and the style the colours are presented in) like that will heavily depend on the particular individual, and is quite probably going to change for any individual as they get older between 8 and 14. Secondly, the example above is unpleasant to view and is likely to give those who are colour blind major problems (having green sitting on redish shades). | |
| May 18, 2016 at 8:40 | comment | added | Walfrat | To be honest, those colors are just make my eyes bleeding... as showed the accepted answer, you can have something with colors without having something which is just ugly and useless. I'm pretty sure, i would have less difficulty to read your image without any effects than reading with all those effects, it's just way too much. And i don't see why it wouldn't be the same for childs. Applying some logics for kids is not for 3 years old, but for some olders that may really not like so flashy things. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 22:00 | comment | added | James Snell | At risk of getting into chat territory - One thing I would say about your UI is syntax highlighting SQL statements, not especially splitting database concepts from the coding, which, if your intent is to make a "Scratch for databases" would be a good idea to do. Consider a child-friendly version of the query design tools in MS Access for example, where tables are presented with their fields. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 17:28 | answer | added | Tommy | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 17, 2016 at 16:59 | answer | added | Kwuz | timeline score: 5 | |
| S May 17, 2016 at 14:31 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Corrected spelling
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| May 17, 2016 at 14:09 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 17, 2016 at 14:31 | |||||
| May 17, 2016 at 13:51 | comment | added | Darael | I'd draw a distinction between "colourful" and "childish", myself. Colours are (or can be, at least, for those with average colour-perception) an extra information-channel that we use in software for adults, too. Apply those principles, rather than making the software "childish", because kids are pretty smart and can tell when someone's patronising them - and most of them don't like it much. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 12:45 | answer | added | nigel222 | timeline score: 9 | |
| May 17, 2016 at 11:20 | comment | added | Gorchestopher H | I wish I had syntax formatting when I was learning to program... | |
| May 17, 2016 at 9:11 | comment | added | Colonel Panic | Should software for children be garishly colourful? If you want to sell it to their parents and teachers, probably. Do children care? I doubt it. Minecraft has a clunky interface, but is a hit with children because it's playful and creative. | |
| May 16, 2016 at 23:52 | comment | added | Mikhail V | And yes, this Scratch thing is horrible, just want to scroll the page away from it immediately. I believe it can cause mental disorder, if used for a long time. | |
| May 16, 2016 at 23:28 | comment | added | Mikhail V | Just an opinion (I work on syntaxes and reading effectivity problems). I don't think that child's cogniton of textual information is fundamentally different from adult's. What is readable for an adult must be readable for the child. I would probably just make everything bigger. General rule for colors - don't use more than 2 extra colors. I am an adult and this looks to me really bad, sorry. | |
| May 16, 2016 at 21:37 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackUX/status/732324065470492672 | ||
| May 16, 2016 at 21:26 | comment | added | Marcus Riemer | Ah, another thing I didn't trip over. The question mark is blue in the sidebar because it is meant to indicate a "hole" something could be placed in to. But if a "hole" is not filled in the query, that's an error. And yes, I eventually plan to incorporate shapes for the type system (as Scratch does), but sadly my prototype doesn't know a thing about types right now. | |
| May 16, 2016 at 21:22 | comment | added | Tim Grant | Be careful you don't focus on color choice and ignore color use. You can both blue and red "question mark" boxes. Nothing except the color warns me that the "angry" red one is probably a bigger problem. If I couldn't see color, I wouldn't get that clue. Look how on the "Scratch" interface uses differences in shapes to provide an additional way to discern between the kinds of elements. | |
| May 16, 2016 at 19:44 | vote | accept | Marcus Riemer | ||
| May 16, 2016 at 18:52 | answer | added | Stonetip | timeline score: 5 | |
| May 16, 2016 at 16:11 | answer | added | Roux Martin | timeline score: 91 | |
| May 16, 2016 at 15:45 | review | First posts | |||
| May 16, 2016 at 16:08 | |||||
| May 16, 2016 at 15:45 | history | asked | Marcus Riemer | CC BY-SA 3.0 |