User Research with Kids: How to Effectively Conduct Research with Participants Aged 3-16

ISBN-13: 9781484270707 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 178 str.

Thomas Visby Snitker

Spis treści

Preface 

An introduction to research with kids 

Chapter 1: Understanding kids and their experiences 

• Design, innovation and the need for research - and KX, Kids Experience 
• Play is a job to be done 
• What to expect when you’re expecting … kids for research 
• Kids research and rocket science 
• The status of children i n research and i n society - and i n your own mind 
• Kids: a very picky and playful audience - and research target 
• A spectrum of play – and a spectrum for research 
• A free-play research setup 
• A directed play research setup 
• A guided play – or games – research setup 
• (Section on kids development to follow here) 
• Global research with kids 
• Research with foreign kids means working with foreign adults 
• Selecting which cultures to study 
• Power distance 
• Individualism (vs. collectivism) 
• Masculinity (vs. femininity) 
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Long-term orientation
• Cognitive differences between Easterners and Westerners 
• Causal attribution
• Categorization based on rules (Western) or relationship (Eastern)
• Attention to the field (Eastern) or salient objects (Western) 
• Task-focus orientation (Western) and socioemotional relational orientation
• (Eastern) 

Chapter 2: How (not) to ruin perfectly good research in 18 steps 

• The bias chain - is bias a feature or a bug? 
• Bias in the scoping phase 
• For the right stakeholders or client 
• The right objective or problem or pain or goal 
• The right product or project 
• Selection bias 
• Bias during the preparation phase 
• The right participants, described i n the right terms 
• Sampling bias 
• Description bias 
• Descriptions i nherited from market research 
• Skill l evel as a descriptor 
• Staticity bias 
• The bias of gatekeepers and professional respondents 
• Doing the right things 
• Consensus bias 
• Right time of day or week or month 
• Right duration 
• Right l ocation/setting 
• Using the right device 
• Bias during the execution phase 
• Primed/instructed right 
• Primed/instructed i n the right amount 
• Moderated Right 
• Moderator Bias 
• Biased Questions 
• Leading Questions Bias 
• Misunderstood Question Bias 
• Unanswerable Question Bias 
• Metaphorically speaking 
• Question Order Bias 
• Biased Answers 
• Cognitive overload bias 
• Consistency Bias 
• Dominant Respondent Bias 
• Error Bias 
• Hostility Bias 
• Moderator Acceptance Bias (Acquiescence bias) 
• Mood Bias 
• Overstatement Bias 
• Reference Bias (Order Bias) 
• Sensitive i ssue Bias 
• Social Acceptance Bias 
• Sponsor Bias 
• The most dreaded answer: ‘ I don’t know.’ 
• Monitored by the right people 
• Bias during the analysis and reporting phase 
• Analysed right 
• Reported right 
• Biased Reporting 
• Positive reporting bias and Publication bias 
• Presented right 
• Hindsight bias 
• Sustained right 
• Actioned right 
• Bias is not a bug – i t’s a feature 
• Further reading on bias 

Chapter 3: Succeed through better practice

• Best practice – or j ust better practice 
• Compliance to rules and regulations 
• The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 
• A consent form 
• Minimize the collection of unnecessary i nformation 
• Ensure that all user data (including by 3rd party tools) i s being stored and
• processed securely 
• Give users control of their data 
• COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act 
• ESOMAR Codes and Guidelines 
• Best practice 
• Prepare for best practice 
• Research and report using best practice 

Chapter 4: What not to score 

The one score to rule them all 78
• What i s the Net Promoter Score (NPS) 78
• Do you trust in numbers? How many percent? How much on a scale from one to ten?
• Bad experiences l ead to l ess spending (Example 1) 
• Poor customer service experiences l ead to avoidance (Example 2) 
• Unhappy customers don’t complain - they churn (Example 3) 
Retaining customers i s better business than acquiring new (Example 4) 
• User research by numbers 
• Is i t a stretch to claim that NPS has business relevance? 
• ‘How l ikely would you be...
• ‘... to recommend …’ 
• ‘... to a friend?’ 
• ‘… to a relative?’ 
• … in which context? 
• … scored on what scale? 
• … why? 

Chapter 5: What to score 

• The System Usability Scale, SUS 
• A KX - Kids’ Experience - score 
• When to produce the score? 
• Who does the scoring? 
• Score what exactly? 
• Engagement and Curiosity 
• Usable 
• Familiarity – conceptual and content 
• Awareness and salience 
• Satisfaction and fun 
• Other evaluation criteria are relevant 
• (here will follow KX score -case example 1: How kids build their wish lists for Christmas, using major web portals) 
• (here will follow KX score -case example 2: How kids experience the initial phases of playing top-tier apps) 

Chapter 6: How you can use the kids experience score 

• Build your own experience score 
• Build behavioural indicators
• Define audience (sub)segments
• Collate and test 
• Score and report

Chapter 7 Summary

• The joy, delight and beauty of research 
• If you want kids to use your product or service … 
• User research i s not rocket science... 
• (this section to be continued) 
• Yes there’s bias everywhere, but… 
• (this summing up section to be continued with 2-3 more items) 

O autorze

Thomas Visby Snitker is a senior user research manager at LEGO (The LEGO Agency), and formerly the CEO, owner, and founder of Snitker Group (2005). Thomas is passionate about user centricity, research, user experience (UX), and usability. He enjoys writing and has contributed two chapters on user research around the world and on the impact of culture on user research in the book Handbook of Global User Research (2009, Morgan Kaufman Books). He's also published a book called Breaking Through to the Other Side - Using User Experience in Web, Interactive TV and Mobile Services.

Thomas is a frequent speaker at Danish and international conferences, such as The UX Masterclass, and blogs for the Danish edition of Computerworld. In addition, he serves as external reviewer at the IT University of Copenhagen, The Copenhagen Business School, The Technical University of Denmark, and the Information Science School of Copenhagen.

Before he founded Snitker Group, Thomas worked as a usability specialist in IT (at KMD), in a media agency (Mediacom and Beyond Interactive), and a web agency (Signal Digital and GreyDigital).

Blurb

If you are a designer, producer, marketer, or researcher creating products for children, it is essential that you are aware of the key differences between children and adults when it comes to user journeys. While children might speak the same language as adult users, what they are actually communicating can be completely different. User Research with Kids explores these differences and more.

Author Thomas Visby Snitker walks you through how to best approach user research with children through the processes of conceptualization, design, prototyping, and eventually the launch. Adults who research kids’ experiences venture into a familiar yet foreign land where the inhabitants speak a different (yet familiar) language and have different behavioral norms and values. It is important for researchers to decipher and understand this language. Including children in the process will lead to better targeted and better designed products, and User Research with Kids will help you attain this goal.

Snitker’s useful insights in this book will help professionals and students in all sectors of research, design, and innovation. User Research with Kids will teach you how to better work with children using key approaches, such as understanding what play is and holistically measuring experience from a child’s cognitive perspective. Apply research rigor and best practices for your next product launch, and expand your user understanding with User Research with Kids.