Designing a children’s app? 5 factors to keep in mind

It comes as no surprise that 85% of 8–12-year-olds use social media and many of them have mobile phones, so the internet is highly accessible to them. These numbers have increased more during the current Covid-19 pandemic.

With this, it’s more likely for many tweens to come into contact with harmful content or people than ever before.

56% of kids aged 8–12 year olds are exposed to cyber bullying, video game addiction and online grooming.

Because of this, there have been discussions to strengthen rules and regulations towards digital products to increase safety measures, protecting the rights and data/information of kids. This trend urges parents to know and guide how their kids (under 13 years old) explore and use digital products.

Considering its importance of protecting underaged children, the team at 55 Minutes is keen to gain insights on how UX plays a role in designing safety measures.

Having not only done research on children’s apps and their safety measures, but coupled with the know-how we’ve gained through our experience designing digital products for children,  we would like to share five important considerations you should keep in mind when designing apps that involve children.

Note that mobile apps included in this article engage both parents and kids as users.

1. Prevent children under 13 from signing up without parents’ consent

Be mindful of current rules and regulations. This not only protects your product, but also complies with privacy regulations for kids!

Based on COPPA (in the US), GDPR (in EU), and PDPA in Singapore, the commonly agreed regulation is:

• Children under 13 years old are required to gain parents’ consent to sign up for apps/website services and access their services

• Children under 13 years old are required to gain parents’ consent to collect their data (e.g. photographs, images, geolocation information, etc.)

Also, ensure that your product sign-up process and certain parts of services have sufficient safeguards to make sure kids do not pretend to be their parents to access the service! Here are some methods you can use to prevent underage children from signing up without parental consent.

• Birthday verification: Make users enter their birthdays and if they’re below 13, do not allow them to proceed with the further steps

• Email verification: Verify their email as email creation is only allowed for children older than 13 years old

• Have parents create ID and Passwords of children: Parents can create their kids’ ID and password. Having an identification approval step for parents would help to confirm who is creating the account

• QR code or Access code: Generate an access code to send to parents’ phones so that kids can only access the app with the code

  
  

Sign-up methods and its use case to verify parents’ identification and ensure parents’ consent

2. Make terms and conditions clear and easy to understand for parents

Have you heard of the YouTuber who tried to read the terms and conditions of all apps on a smartphone? 😂 It took them 31 hours to read it all. Yes, product planners make it difficult not only with the length of their T&C, but also through all the unfamiliar legal terms.

So, what do you think busy working parents would do? They’d probably just tick the checkbox without reading, oblivious to what they are consenting to! This would cause them to agree to use an app without knowing how their data and kids’ personal data would be used or shared with others.

The good news is that you can help parents better understand what they’re agreeing to by giving key points of your terms and conditions, such as what type of information/data your app will collect and how that information will be used. ☝ Keep in mind that you should never sacrifice having good terms and conditions just to make it easier for parents to understand them.

Messenger Kids - key summary page with simple language for parents at the sign-up stage

Another way would be to create friction in the user experience (UX), a moment to slow down. Ironically, UX designers are taught to create seamless UX, but friction in this case, would hinder parents from ticking the box and onboarding the product quickly.

Family time - an example of how using friction in UX is necessary. When users select the checkbox, it does not display as “checked” immediately. Instead, the ‘terms and conditions’ page pops up, encouraging users to read it first.

3. Design notification settings for the children’s perspectives

You’ll usually see notification settings after you tick the checkbox in the terms and conditions. In general, notification settings are related to your product’s clear purpose, explaining why your product needs to access certain data such as audio recordings, photographs, and video access.

In this step, a brief communication via your app is key to helping parents and kids become aware of which data your product will access. Try to communicate it step by step to make sure parents and kids understand your intention on data access. Make the written tone engaging and inviting!

Although they set the data access in the app onboarding process, try to make the setting unhidden in the menu, allowing your users easy access to it, so they can easily adjust the setting whenever they want.

Find my Kids/Pingo - showing how to process data access setting

4. Create informative, engaging, and interactive onboarding steps and guides for children

I’m sure you’ve experienced some apps that don’t provide proper onboarding steps. You struggle to know about the main feature, are not clear what the app is about, and how you will benefit from this app.

The user onboarding process is when your users form their first impression about your product and decide whether they want to proceed with further steps. Thus, if you are a UX designer, it is important for you to design an effective onboarding experience.

Find my Kids / Pingo - onboarding steps for kids

Having children below 13 years old as users means adding extra considerations in designing the onboarding experience.

• Make the tone and language easy to understand and engaging! Try to think about the lingo used by early teens, and how they’d like to be addressed.

• Choose appropriate images! Do a quick contextual research on what kids consider cool, and what type of images that resonates with them.

This will increase the level of kids’ engagement and interest in your product as well as cater to them to better understand how your product will be useful and beneficial to them.

5. Include safety measures in the app for worst-case scenarios

Remember that we need to consider unexpected situations that could happen, especially when tweens are exploring social media apps. Think of the worst-case scenario: how might kids be manipulated in your product and how can your team protect them and help them take the right action in those scenarios?

For example, in Messenger kids, the child can use the “Report/block” feature if a stranger approaches them with an inappropriate photo or text. The “SOS” button in FindMyKids/Pingo can be used when a kid encounters bullying or a stranger in their location.

Both examples are good cases for how a digital product addresses the kids’ safety while they are using the product. Make sure all those emergency buttons are visible and easily accessible in an urgent situation.

Messenger Kids (left) provides the ‘report/block a person’ feature, while Pingo (right) uses a large and visible SOS button to attract the right attention.

An Easy Checklist for You

To sum it up, here’s a checklist you can use to make sure you design appropriate safety measures as you’re developing an app where users might include children under 13 years old.

• Have you defined what features are available and accessible to children (under 13  years old)? What features are needed as a safeguard?

• Have you crafted an overview of the summary of terms and conditions to give parents an understanding of what they consent to when using your product?

• Have you designed data and notification user settings steps in an engaging and interactive way to inform what types of personal information and data your product needs to collect?

• Does the onboarding process of your product communicate to kids by using their language and images that suit them?

• Have you thought of worst case scenarios that can happen to kids while they are using your product? Also make sure that ask for help features are easily accessible.

Do remember that your target users’ behaviors will be shaped by how your product is designed!

“Don’t just concentrate on the technology, but on the design decisions — work through unintended consequences before you implement it.” (from E&T online blog, July 15, 2020)

We hope that you’re able to use the above to create a digital product that ensures kids’ safety while still being engaging for kids to use!

If you’re interested in learning more about our work, you can reach out at hello@55mins.com.

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Hye Yoon is a UX researcher at 55 Minutes. She has a Bachelor’s in furniture and spatial design from Seoul, South Korea, and has a Master’s in Helsinki, Finland. Currently, she lives in Singapore, observing her surroundings from the lens of a tourist from time to time. She loves nature and goes cycling every weekend in the Northeast region of Singapore.