Pushing Dora’s Buttons: Know Your User
Ella has been playing the Dora The Explorer: Animal Adventures game for a few months now. The game is supposedly for ages 3 and up, but Ella has pretty much mastered all of the games at the highest level (and she’ll be three on Halloween). If it sounds like I’m bragging, I apologize… but I am.
The one thing Ella hadn’t been doing is clicking on the items herself. She would point and I would click. Now I’m starting to see where the age minimum comes in. Ella has started pointing and clicking by herself with the mouse. However, the software developers made sure to make it as hard as possible for a small child to navigate to and click on the button.
Take the example below. The area that is clickable is so sensitive it is ridiculous. Also, if the “star” cursor is on the corner of the eyes they are trying to click on, it won’t trigger. The middle of the star has to be within the clickable area. Ridiculous. Talk about a guaranteed way to frustrate a little kid. She meticulously tries to center it until it lights up. Then about have the time when she goes to click, she nudges it a bit and loses it again.
It is pretty obvious to me after sitting with this game that—while it is cute—it was never tested with little kids. If so, the hovering and clicking frustration would have been immediately apparent.
So, the lesson is… don’t just test. Test with your actual user base.
Great “real world” example on UI design.
You don’t suppose this was a misguided attempt to work on developing fine motor control skills do you? If so, that could explain the overly sensitive positioning, but then that’s probably not age appropriate. Maybe it could have been designed to have the parent select the child’s age in setup, and that would then alter the proximity sensitivity? The younger the child’s age, the larger the target area?
Amazing how quickly “new requirements” come out, huh?
You, sir, have just thought more about this than the developers have.
If there was a lesson they were instilling with this exercise, it was likely: “Even when you appear perfectly lined up for success, you still need to push a little harder to be extra perfectly aligned.”
… or something like that.
I can hear the developers now:
‘Oh, yeah…that’s what it was meant for…that thing…you just said…’