The Chicago Manual of Style presents two basic documentation systems: (1) notes and bibliography and (2) author-date. Choosing between the two often depends on subject matter and the nature of sources cited, as each system is favored by different groups of scholars.
The notes and bibliography style is preferred by many in the humanities, including those in literature, history, and the arts. This style presents bibliographic information in notes and, often, a bibliography. It accommodates a variety of sources, including esoteric ones less appropriate to the author-date system.
The author-date system has long been used by those in the physical, natural, and social sciences. In this system, sources are briefly cited in the text, usually in parentheses, by author’s last name and date of publication. The short citations are amplified in a list of references, where full bibliographic information is provided.
Aside from the use of notes versus parenthetical references in the text, the two systems share a similar style. Click on the tabs below to see some common examples of materials cited in each style, including examples of common electronic sources. For numerous specific examples, see chapters 14 and 15 of the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.
Notes and Bibliography: Sample Citations
The following examples illustrate citations using the notes and bibliography system. Examples of notes are followed by shortened versions of citations to the same source. For more details and many more examples, see chapter 14 of The Chicago Manual of Style. For examples of the same citations using the author-date system, click on the Author-Date tab above.
Book
One author
1. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006), 99–100.
2. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 3.
Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006.
Two or more authors
1. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The War: An Intimate History, 1941–1945 (New York: Knopf, 2007), 52.
2. Ward and Burns, War, 59–61.
Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. The War: An Intimate History, 1941–1945. New York: Knopf, 2007.
For four or more authors, list all of the authors in the bibliography; in the note, list only the first author, followed by et al. (“and others”):
1. Dana Barnes et al., Plastics: Essays on American Corporate Ascendance in the 1960s . . .
2. Barnes et al., Plastics . . .
Editor, translator, or compiler instead of author
1. Richmond Lattimore, trans., The Iliad of Homer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 91–92.
2. Lattimore, Iliad, 24.
Lattimore, Richmond, trans. The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
Editor, translator, or compiler in addition to author
1. Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera, trans. Edith Grossman (London: Cape, 1988), 242–55.
2. García Márquez, Cholera, 33.
García Márquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera. Translated by Edith Grossman. London: Cape, 1988.
Chapter or other part of a book
1. John D. Kelly, “Seeing Red: Mao Fetishism, Pax Americana, and the Moral Economy of War,” in Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, ed. John D. Kelly et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 77.
2. Kelly, “Seeing Red,” 81–82.
Kelly, John D. “Seeing Red: Mao Fetishism, Pax Americana, and the Moral Economy of War.” In Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, edited by John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton, 67–83. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Chapter of an edited volume originally published elsewhere (as in primary sources)
1. Quintus Tullius Cicero. “Handbook on Canvassing for the Consulship,” in Rome: Late Republic and Principate, ed. Walter Emil Kaegi Jr. and Peter White, vol. 2 of University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, ed. John Boyer and Julius Kirshner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 35.
2. Cicero, “Canvassing for the Consulship,” 35.
Cicero, Quintus Tullius. “Handbook on Canvassing for the Consulship.” In Rome: Late Republic and Principate, edited by Walter Emil Kaegi Jr. and Peter White. Vol. 2 of University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, edited by John Boyer and Julius Kirshner, 33–46. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Originally published in Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, trans., The Letters of Cicero, vol. 1 (London: George Bell & Sons, 1908).
Preface, foreword, introduction, or similar part of a book
1. James Rieger, introduction to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xx–xxi.
2. Rieger, introduction, xxxiii.
Rieger, James. Introduction to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, xi–xxxvii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Book published electronically
If a book is available in more than one format, cite the version you consulted. For books consulted online, list a URL; include an access date only if one is required by your publisher or discipline. If no fixed page numbers are available, you can include a section title or a chapter or other number.
1. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: Penguin Classics, 2007), Kindle edition.
2. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, eds., The Founders’ Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), accessed February 28, 2010, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/.
3. Austen, Pride and Prejudice.
4. Kurland and Lerner, Founder’s Constitution, chap. 10, doc. 19.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007. Kindle edition.
Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner, eds. The Founders’ Constitution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Accessed February 28, 2010. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/.
Journal article
Article in a print journal
In a note, list the specific page numbers consulted, if any. In the bibliography, list the page range for the whole article.
1. Joshua I. Weinstein, “The Market in Plato’s Republic,” Classical Philology 104 (2009): 440.
2. Weinstein, “Plato’s Republic,” 452–53.
Weinstein, Joshua I. “The Market in Plato’s Republic.” Classical Philology 104 (2009): 439–58.
Article in an online journal
Include a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) if the journal lists one. A DOI is a permanent ID that, when appended to http://dx.doi.org/ in the address bar of an Internet browser, will lead to the source. If no DOI is available, list a URL. Include an access date only if one is required by your publisher or discipline.
1. Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts, “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network,” American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 411, accessed February 28, 2010, doi:10.1086/599247.
2. Kossinets and Watts, “Origins of Homophily,” 439.
Kossinets, Gueorgi, and Duncan J. Watts. “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network.” American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 405–50. Accessed February 28, 2010. doi:10.1086/599247.
Article in a newspaper or popular magazine
Newspaper and magazine articles may be cited in running text (“As Sheryl Stolberg and Robert Pear noted in a New York Times article on February 27, 2010, . . .”) instead of in a note, and they are commonly omitted from a bibliography. The following examples show the more formal versions of the citations. If you consulted the article online, include a URL; include an access date only if your publisher or discipline requires one. If no author is identified, begin the citation with the article title.
1. Daniel Mendelsohn, “But Enough about Me,” New Yorker, January 25, 2010, 68.
2. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Robert Pear, “Wary Centrists Posing Challenge in Health Care Vote,” New York Times, February 27, 2010, accessed February 28, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/politics/28health.html.
3. Mendelsohn, “But Enough about Me,” 69.
4. Stolberg and Pear, “Wary Centrists.”
Mendelsohn, Daniel. “But Enough about Me.” New Yorker, January 25, 2010.
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, and Robert Pear. “Wary Centrists Posing Challenge in Health Care Vote.” New York Times, February 27, 2010. Accessed February 28, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/politics/28health.html.
Book review
1. David Kamp, “Deconstructing Dinner,” review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, New York Times, April 23, 2006, Sunday Book Review, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/books/review/23kamp.html.
2. Kamp, “Deconstructing Dinner.”
Kamp, David. “Deconstructing Dinner.” Review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan. New York Times, April 23, 2006, Sunday Book Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/books/review/23kamp.html.
Thesis or dissertation
1. Mihwa Choi, “Contesting Imaginaires in Death Rituals during the Northern Song Dynasty” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008).
2. Choi, “Contesting Imaginaires.”
Choi, Mihwa. “Contesting Imaginaires in Death Rituals during the Northern Song Dynasty.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008.
Paper presented at a meeting or conference
1. Rachel Adelman, “ ‘Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On’: God’s Footstool in the Aramaic Targumim and Midrashic Tradition” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 21–24, 2009).
2. Adelman, “Such Stuff as Dreams.”
Adelman, Rachel. “ ‘Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On’: God’s Footstool in the Aramaic Targumim and Midrashic Tradition.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 21–24, 2009.
Website
A citation to website content can often be limited to a mention in the text or in a note (“As of July 19, 2008, the McDonald’s Corporation listed on its website . . .”). If a more formal citation is desired, it may be styled as in the examples below. Because such content is subject to change, include an access date or, if available, a date that the site was last modified.
1. “Google Privacy Policy,” last modified March 11, 2009, http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html.
2. “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts,” McDonald’s Corporation, accessed July 19, 2008, http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html.
3. “Google Privacy Policy.”
4. “Toy Safety Facts.”
Google. “Google Privacy Policy.” Last modified March 11, 2009. http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html.
McDonald’s Corporation. “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts.” Accessed July 19, 2008. http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html.
Blog entry or comment
Blog entries or comments may be cited in running text (“In a comment posted to The Becker-Posner Blog on February 23, 2010, . . .”) instead of in a note, and they are commonly omitted from a bibliography. The following examples show the more formal versions of the citations. There is no need to add pseud. after an apparently fictitious or informal name. (If an access date is required, add it before the URL; see examples elsewhere in this guide.)
1. Jack, February 25, 2010 (7:03 p.m.), comment on Richard Posner, “Double Exports in Five Years?,” The Becker-Posner Blog, February 21, 2010, http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/02/double-exports-in-five-years-posner.html.
2. Jack, comment on Posner, “Double Exports.”
Becker-Posner Blog, The. http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/.
E-mail or text message
E-mail and text messages may be cited in running text (“In a text message to the author on March 1, 2010, John Doe revealed . . .”) instead of in a note, and they are rarely listed in a bibliography. The following example shows the more formal version of a note.
1. John Doe, e-mail message to author, February 28, 2010.
Item in a commercial database
For items retrieved from a commercial database, add the name of the database and an accession number following the facts of publication. In this example, the dissertation cited above is shown as it would be cited if it were retrieved from ProQuest’s database for dissertations and theses.
Choi, Mihwa. “Contesting Imaginaires in Death Rituals during the Northern Song Dynasty.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008. ProQuest (AAT 3300426).
Author-Date: Sample Citations
The following examples illustrate citations using the author-date system. Each example of a reference list entry is accompanied by an example of a corresponding parenthetical citation in the text. For more details and many more examples, see chapter 15 of The Chicago Manual of Style. For examples of the same citations using the notes and bibliography system, click on the Notes and Bibliography tab above.
Book
One author
Pollan, Michael. 2006. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin.
Two or more authors
Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. 2007. The War: An Intimate History, 1941–1945. New York: Knopf.
(Ward and Burns 2007, 52)
For four or more authors, list all of the authors in the reference list; in the text, list only the first author, followed by et al. (“and others”):
Editor, translator, or compiler instead of author
Lattimore, Richmond, trans. 1951. The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
(Lattimore 1951, 91–92)
Editor, translator, or compiler in addition to author
García Márquez, Gabriel. 1988. Love in the Time of Cholera. Translated by Edith Grossman. London: Cape.
(García Márquez 1988, 242–55)
Chapter or other part of a book
Kelly, John D. 2010. “Seeing Red: Mao Fetishism, Pax Americana, and the Moral Economy of War.” In Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, edited by John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton, 67–83. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chapter of an edited volume originally published elsewhere (as in primary sources)
Cicero, Quintus Tullius. 1986. “Handbook on Canvassing for the Consulship.” In Rome: Late Republic and Principate, edited by Walter Emil Kaegi Jr. and Peter White. Vol. 2 of University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, edited by John Boyer and Julius Kirshner, 33–46. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Originally published in Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, trans., The Letters of Cicero, vol. 1 (London: George Bell & Sons, 1908).
Preface, foreword, introduction, or similar part of a book
Rieger, James. 1982. Introduction to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, xi–xxxvii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Book published electronically
If a book is available in more than one format, cite the version you consulted. For books consulted online, list a URL; include an access date only if one is required by your publisher or discipline. If no fixed page numbers are available, you can include a section title or a chapter or other number.
Austen, Jane. 2007. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Penguin Classics. Kindle edition.
Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner, eds. 1987. The Founders’ Constitution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/.
(Austen 2007)
(Kurland and Lerner, chap. 10, doc. 19)
Journal article
Article in a print journal
In the text, list the specific page numbers consulted, if any. In the reference list entry, list the page range for the whole article.
Weinstein, Joshua I. 2009. “The Market in Plato’s Republic.” Classical Philology 104:439–58.
Article in an online journal
Include a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) if the journal lists one. A DOI is a permanent ID that, when appended to http://dx.doi.org/ in the address bar of an Internet browser, will lead to the source. If no DOI is available, list a URL. Include an access date only if one is required by your publisher or discipline.
Kossinets, Gueorgi, and Duncan J. Watts. 2009. “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network.” American Journal of Sociology 115:405–50. Accessed February 28, 2010. doi:10.1086/599247.
(Kossinets and Watts 2009, 411)
Article in a newspaper or popular magazine
Newspaper and magazine articles may be cited in running text (“As Sheryl Stolberg and Robert Pear noted in a New York Times article on February 27, 2010, . . .”), and they are commonly omitted from a reference list. The following examples show the more formal versions of the citations. If you consulted the article online, include a URL; include an access date only if your publisher or discipline requires one. If no author is identified, begin the citation with the article title.
Mendelsohn, Daniel. 2010. “But Enough about Me.” New Yorker, January 25.
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, and Robert Pear. 2010. “Wary Centrists Posing Challenge in Health Care Vote.” New York Times, February 27. Accessed February 28, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/politics/28health.html.
(Mendelsohn 2010, 68)
(Stolberg and Pear 2010)
Book review
Kamp, David. 2006. “Deconstructing Dinner.” Review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan. New York Times, April 23, Sunday Book Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/books/review/23kamp.html.
Thesis or dissertation
Choi, Mihwa. 2008. “Contesting Imaginaires in Death Rituals during the Northern Song Dynasty.” PhD diss., University of Chicago.
Paper presented at a meeting or conference
Adelman, Rachel. 2009. “ ‘Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On’: God’s Footstool in the Aramaic Targumim and Midrashic Tradition.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 21–24.
Website
A citation to website content can often be limited to a mention in the text (“As of July 19, 2008, the McDonald’s Corporation listed on its website . . .”). If a more formal citation is desired, it may be styled as in the examples below. Because such content is subject to change, include an access date or, if available, a date that the site was last modified. In the absence of a date of publication, use the access date or last-modified date as the basis of the citation.
Google. 2009. “Google Privacy Policy.” Last modified March 11. http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html.
McDonald’s Corporation. 2008. “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts.” Accessed July 19. http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html.
(Google 2009)
(McDonald’s 2008)
Blog entry or comment
Blog entries or comments may be cited in running text (“In a comment posted to The Becker-Posner Blog on February 23, 2010, . . .”), and they are commonly omitted from a reference list. If a reference list entry is needed, cite the blog post there but mention comments in the text only. (If an access date is required, add it before the URL; see examples elsewhere in this guide.)
Posner, Richard. 2010. “Double Exports in Five Years?” The Becker-Posner Blog, February 21. http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/02/double-exports-in-five-years-posner.html.
E-mail or text message
E-mail and text messages may be cited in running text (“In a text message to the author on March 1, 2010, John Doe revealed . . .”), and they are rarely listed in a reference list. In parenthetical citations, the term personal communication (or pers. comm.) can be used.
(John Doe, e-mail message to author, February 28, 2010)
Item in a commercial database
For items retrieved from a commercial database, add the name of the database and an accession number following the facts of publication. In this example, the dissertation cited above is shown as it would be cited if it were retrieved from ProQuest’s database for dissertations and theses.
Choi, Mihwa. 2008. “Contesting Imaginaires in Death Rituals during the Northern Song Dynasty.” PhD diss., University of Chicago. ProQuest (AAT 3300426).
2011
Fitton, D., Horton, M., Guo, Y. and Read, J.C. (2011) Turning Up the Heat on Energy Monitoring in the Home. 1st International Conference on Revisiting the Socio-Political and Technological Dimensions of Climate Change, 97-106, Preston, UK.
Horton, M., Read, J.C. and Sim, G. (2011) Making Your Mind Up? The Reliability of Children's Survey Responses. In Proceedings of BCS-HCI 2011, Northumbria, UK.
Mazzone, E., Tikkanen, R., Read, J.C., Iivari, N., and Beale, R. "Integrating Children's Contributions in the Interaction Design Process". International Journal of art and Technology. (In Press)
Mazzone, E., Read, J.C., and Beale, R. (2011) Towards a Framework of Co-Design Sessions with Children. Proc. of Interact 2011, Springer.
Mazzone, E., Read, J.C., and Beale, R. (2011) Organising Co-Design Sessions with Schoolchildren. Proceedings of Workshop on "Opportunities and Challenges when Designing and Developing with Kids @ School" held at IDC 2011 Conference.
McKnight, L. (2011) Designing for Children with ADHD: The Search for Guidelines for Non-Experts. User Experience, Volume 10, Issue 1. UPA.
McKnight, L. and Read, J.C. (2011) PLU-E: A Proposed Framework for Planning and Conducting Evaluation Studies with Children. In Proceedings of BCS-HCI 2011, Northumbria, UK. [PDF]
Read, J.C., Fitton, D., Cowan, B., Beale, R., Guo, Y. and Horton, M. 2011. Understanding and designing cool technologies for teenagers. In Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1567-1572.
Read, J.C. (2011) MESS Days: Working with Children to Design and Deliver Worthwhile Mobile Experiences. User Experience, Volume 10, Issue 1. UPA.
Read, J.C. and Bekker, M.M. (2011) The Nature of Child Computer Interaction. In Proceedings of BCS-HCI 2011, Northumbria, UK.
Read, J.C., Fitton, D. and Horton, M. (2011) Technology that Talks to Teenagers. 1st International Conference on Revisiting the Socio-Political and Technological Dimensions of Climate Change, 86-96, Preston, UK.
2010
Blanco, J.M., Landry, P., C., Mealla. Sebástian, Mazzone, E., and Parés, N. (2010) "PIPLEX: tangible experience in an augmented reality video game". Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 274-277.
Gregory, P; Whittaker K.; Binns, D and Taylor, K. (2010) “Aping Around: Investigating the Social and Ethical Implications of an Interactive Family DVD” Proceedings of ETHICOMP Conference, April 14-16 2010, Tarragona, Spain.
Kano, A., Horton, M. and Read, J.C. (2010). Thumbs-up scale and frequency of use scale for use in self reporting of children's computer experience. In Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries (NordiCHI '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 699-702. DOI=10.1145/1868914.1869008 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1868914.1869008
Manches, A., Horton, M. and Yarosh, S. (2010) Children's role in mobile interaction design: review and reflection. International Journal of Mobile HCI, 2 (2). IGI-Global.
Mazzone, E., Iivari, N., Tikkanen, R., Read, J.C. and Beale, R. (2010) Considering context, content, management, and engagement in design activities with children. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 108-117. DOI=10.1145/1810543.1810556 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1810543.1810556
McKnight, L. (2010) Collaborative Design in Second Life: Helping or Hindering the Creative Process? HCIEd, Abertay.
McKnight, L. and Cassidy, B. (2010) Children's Interaction with Mobile Touch-Screen Devices: Experiences and Guidelines for Design. International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction, 2 (2). IGI-Global. [PDF]
McKnight, L. and Fitton, D. (2010) Touch-screen Technology for Children: Giving the Right Instructions and Getting the Right Responses. In Proceedings of IDC 2010, Barcelona, Spain. [PDF]
Read, J.C., Fitton, D. and Mazzone, E. (2010) Using obstructed theatre with child designers to convey requirements. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4063-4068. DOI=10.1145/1753846.1754103 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1754103
Sanchez-Busques, S., Sim, G. & Read, J.C. (2010) Designing a mobile application for teenagers to instruct in science careers. ADIS International Conference Mobile Learning 2010, Porto.
Sim, G, Danino, N. & Horton, M. (2010) Interaction Design: What is it all about? HCIEd, Abertay
Sim, G. & Read, J.C. (2010) The Damage Index: An aggregation tool for usability problem prioritisation. 24th British HCI Conference, Abertay.
2009
Fredrikson, M., Welch, G., Porras, J., Paananen, P., Read, J., Stadler Elmer, S., Heikkinen, K., Myllykoski, M., Hedberg, H., Iivari, N. & Mazzone, E. (2009): Music as an Enabler for Social Inclusion and Provision – The UMSIC approach. In P. L. Emiliani, L. Burzagli, A. Como, F. Gabbani & A-L. Salminen (Eds.) Assistive Technology from Adapted Equipment to Inclusive Environments, IOS Press, Amsterdam. Pp. 622-627.
Kano, A. and J. C. Read (2009). Text Input Error Categorisation: Solving Character Level Insertion Ambiguities Using Zero Time Analysis. BCS HCI 2009. Cambridge, UK, ACM Press.
Kano, A. and Read, J.C. (2009). Causes of Simultaneous Keystrokes in Children and Adults. In Proceedings of the 12th IFIP TC 13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Part I (INTERACT '09), Tom Gross, Jan Gulliksen, Paula Kotzé, Lars Oestreicher, Philippe Palanque, Raquel Oliveira Prates, and Marco Winckler (Eds.). Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 137-140. DOI=10.1007/978-3-642-03655-2_16
Marco, J., Cerezo, E., Baldasarri, S., Mazzone, E., and Read, J. C. 2009. User-oriented design and tangible interaction for kindergarten children. In Proceedings of the 8th international Conference on interaction Design and Children (Como, Italy, June 03 - 05, 2009). IDC '09. ACM, New York, NY, 190-193.
McKnight, L. and J. C. Read (2009). Designing the 'record' button: Using children's understanding of icons to inform the design of a musical interface. IDC'09. Como, Italy, ACM Press. [PDF]
Read, J. C. (2009). Warp Speed Design: a rapid design method for use with children. CHI2009. Boston, MA, ACM Press.
Read, J. C. (2009). "Designing Mobile Phones for Children - Is there a difference?" International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction 1(2).
Read, J.C., Horton, M., Sim, G. & Mazzone, E. (2009) "CRaSh-ing into HCI" In P. Kotze et al. (Ed.) Creativity and HCI: From Experience to Design in Education. (pp 218-227). New York: Springer.
Read, J.C., Sim, G., Fligkos, G., McManus, B. (2009) "Bringing HCI Students into the Academic Playground." HCIEd, Abertay.
Sim, G., Read, J.C. & Cockton, G. (2009) "Evidence based design of heuristics for Computer Assisted Assessment" 12th IFIP TC13 Conference in Human-Computer Interaction, 204-216, Uppsala.
Xu, Y.F., Read, J.C., Sim, G. McManus, B. (2009) "Experience it, Draw it, rate it : Capture Children's Experiences with their drawings. " 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. Como, Italy: ACM Press.
Xu, Y.F., Read, J.C., Sim, G., McManus, B. & Qualter, P. (2009) "Children and 'Smart' Technologies: Can Children's Experiences be Interpreted and Coded?" 23rd BCS Conference on Human Computer Interaction, Cambridge.
2008
Horton, M. & Read, J.C. (2008), Interactive Whiteboards in the Living Room? Asking Children about their Technologies. The 22nd BCS British-HCI 2008, Liverpool, UK. [PDF]
Kano, A. (2008), MECE Categorisation Method for Typing Errors. The 22nd BCS British-HCI 2008, Liverpool, UK. [PDF]
BOOK - Markopoulos, P., Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J, and J Hoysniemi, (2008) Evaluating Interactive Products with and for Children, San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Mazzone, E., Read, J.C. & Beale, R. (2008), Understanding Children's Contributions during Informant Design. The 22nd BCS British-HCI 2008, Liverpool, UK. [PDF]
Mazzone, E. (2008), Determining Value in Informant Design with Children. The 22nd BCS British-HCI 2008, Liverpool, UK
Mazzone, E., Read, J.C., Beale, R. (2008) "Design with and for Difficult Teenagers" in Proceedings of the NordiCHI Conference 2008, Lund, Sweden, ACM Press, 290-297.
Mazzone, E., Read, J., Qualter, P., Zioui, L., Gater, C. (2008) "A Computer Game on Emotions for Teenagers Excluded form School", workshop paper on Marginalised Young People at the Interaction Design and Children Conference 2008, Chicago, USA.
Read, J. C. (2008) "Validating the Fun Toolkit: an instrument for measuring children's opinions of technology." Cognition, Technology & Work, Volume 10, Number 2, pp. 119-128(10)
Read, J. C., Markopoulos, P., Pares, N., Hourcade, J P and Antle, A N. (2008): Child Computer Interaction. Special Interest Group (SIG), CHI 2008, pp. 2419-2422.
Read, J. C. Mazzone, E. (2008). MESS days, Interfaces. 74 [PDF]
Read, J.C. (2008), What You See is What You Worry About: Errors -- Real and Imagined. The 22nd BCS British-HCI 2008, Liverpool, UKXu, D., Read, J. C., Sheehan, R. (2008), In Search of Tangible Magic. The 22nd BCS British-HCI 2008, Liverpool, UK. [PDF]
2007
Hanif, F., Kumar, A., Willcocks, L., Jolly, E,. Jameson, C., Neville, V., Raaj, K., Goodacre, J. A., Read, J. C., Chaudhry, A., Gibbs, P. (2007) The quality of information about kidney transplantation on the World Wide Web, Clinical Transplantation, Volume 21, Number 3, May/June 2007 , pp. 371-376(6)
Horton, M., J. C. Read and G. Sim (2007). Playing With Words: Evaluating Word processors with Children. Ed Media 2007, Vancouver, CA, AACE. [PDF]
Kano, A., J. C. Read, A. Dix and I. S. MacKenzie (2007). ExPECT: An expanded error categorization method for text input. British HCI 2007, Lancaster, UK, ACM Press. [PDF]
Mazzone, E., Xu, D., Read, J. C. (2007), Design in Evaluation: Reflections on Designing for Children�s Technology. The 21st BCS British-HCI 2007, Lancaster, UK. [PDF]
Markopoulos, P., Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J, and J Hoysniemi, Eds (2007) Child Computer Interaction � Research Methodology, Special Edition of Computers Technology and Work
MacKenzie, I. S. and J. C. Read (2007). Using paper Mockups for Evaluating Soft Keyboard Layouts. CASCON 2007, Toronto, CA, IBM Canada Ltd.
Read, J. C. (2007). "A study of the usability of handwriting recognition for text entry by children." - Interacting with Computers 19 (1)
Read, J. C. (2007). Children using Digital Ink for Writing, Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Pen-Based Learning Technologies (PLT 2007) - Volume 00, IEEE Computer Society
Read, J. C (2007) Text Input for the Young and Old, Text Input Systems: Universality and variety. I. S. MacKenzie and K. Tanaka-Ishii (Eds) San Francisco: Morgan Kauffmann Publishers
Read. J. C. (2007) Wizard of Oz Studies, Handbook of Research on User Interface Design and Evaluation for Mobile Technology, J. Lumsden (Ed) Idea Group
Xu, D., J. C. Read, et al. (2007), Evaluation of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) for and with Children � Methods and Challenges. HCI International 2007, Beijing, China
Xu, D., J. C. Read, et al. (2007), Designing and Testing a Tangible Interface Prototype. 6th International Conference for Interaction Design and Children, IDC 07, Aalborg, Denmark. [PDF]
Xu, D., (2007), Doctoral Consortium: Design and Evaluation of Tangible Interfaces for Primary School Children. 6th International Conference for Interaction Design and Children, IDC 07, Aalborg, Denmark
2006
Beale, R., Engelfield, P, Read, J. C. and W Wong, Eds. (2006) HCI Educators 'The Yellow Book', Proceedings HCIE2006, London, UK
Hvannberg, E. T., J. C. Read, L. Bannon, P. Kotzé and W. Wong, Eds. (2006). Inventivity: Teaching theory, design and innovation in HCI, Proceedings HCIEd2006
Kano, A., Read, J. C, and A, Dix (2006) Children's Phrase Set for Text Input Method Evaluations. Proceedings of the Fourth Nordic Conference on Human Computer Interaction - NordiChi 2006
Kelly, S. R., Mazzone, E., Horton, M. and J. C. Read (2006) Bluebells: A Design Method for Child-Centred Product Development. Proceedings of the Fourth Nordic Conference on Human Computer Interaction � NordiChi 2006
Read, J. C., Markopoulos, P., Par�s , N., Hourcade J. P., Antle, A. N. (2008). Child Computer Interaction, CHI2008, Florence, Italy., ACM Press
Read, J. C. and M. Horton (2006). When Teenagers Type, HCI2006, London, UK
Read, J. C., S. R. Kelly and S. Birkett (2006). How Satisfying is Gaze Tracking for Children? Gaze Tracking Workshop, CHI 2006, Montreal, Ca.
Read, J. C. and S. J. MacFarlane (2006). Using the Fun Toolkit and Other Survey Methods to Gather Opinions in Child Computer Interaction. Interaction Design and Children, IDC2006, Tampere, Finland, ACM Press. [PDF]
Read, J. C., S. J. MacFarlane, S. R. Kelly, E. Mazzone and M. Horton (2006). The ChiCI Group. CHI2006, Montreal, Ca, ACM Press.Read. J. C., and I. S. MacKenzie (2006). HCI Comes Alive with the Keyboard. HCIEducators Workshop, London, UK
Read, J. C., S. R. Kelly and G. Sim (2006). 'In it to win it - at it to get it' Low - tech interactions for motivation and Learning in HCI. HCIEd2006 Limerick, Ireland.
Sim, G., S. J. MacFarlane and J. C. Read (2006). "All work and no play: Measuring fun, usability, and learning in software for children." Computers and Education 46(3): 235 - 248.
Sim, G., J. C. Read and P. Holifield (2006a). Evaluating the User Experience in CAA Environments, what affects user satisfaction. CAA 2006, Warwick, UK.
Sim, G., J. C. Read and P. Holifield (2006b). Using Heuristics to Evaluate a Computer Assisted Assessment Environment. Ed Media 2006, Florida, USA.
Xu, D., (2006), Doctoral Consortium: Design and Evaluation of Tangible Interfaces for Children. The 20th BCS British-HCI 2006, London, UK
Xu, D., Mazzone,E., MacFarlane, S. (2006), In Search of Evaluation Methods for Children's Tangible Technology. 5th International Conference for Interaction Design and Children, IDC 06, Tampere, Finland
Xu, D., J. C. Read, E. Mazzone, S. J. MacFarlane and M. Brown (2007). Evaluation of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) for and with Children - Methods and Challenges. HCII 2007, Beijing, Springer.
Pre 2006
Gregory, P. and Read, J. C. (2001), Web based Maths - A Comparison of Different Approaches to using Web Page Development for Learning, 2nd Annual Conference of the LTSN Centre for Information and Computer Science,pp.60-64, North London.
MacFarlane, S., Sim, G., Horton, M.(2005), Assessing Usability and Fun in Educational Software. IDC2005, pp.103-109, Boulder, CO, USA. [PDF]
Mazzone, E., Horton, M., Read, J. (2004), Requirements for a Multimedia Museum Environment, NordiCHI'04, pp.412-424, Tampere, Finland, ACM. [PDF]
Nicol, A. (2004), Using Speech Recognition for Child Computer Interaction When Developing Software for Young Children. HCI2004: Design for Life, Leeds, England, Research Press International. [PDF]
Nicol, A. and C. Casey (2002), Interface Design for Infant Children: A Case Study in Literacy. Interaction Design and Children 2002, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. [PDF]
Nicol, A., C. Casey, et al. (2002), Children are Ready for Speech Technology - but is the Technology Ready for Them? Interaction Design and Children 2002, Eindhoven,The Netherlands. [PDF]
Nicol, A. and L. Snape (2003), A computer based letter formation system for children. Interaction Design and Children 2003, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, England, Child Computer Interaction Group. [PDF]
Nicol, T., Read, J., MacFarlane, S. (2005), Improving Speech Recognition in a Listening Interface for Young Children. HCI2005, Vol 2, p77-
Read, J. (2002), Optimising Text Input for Young Children using Computers for Creative Writing Tasks. HCI 2002, London, England. [PDF]
Read, J. C. (2004), Reading, Reflection, and the Toolkit Approach, HCIE2004, Preston, UK.
Read, J. C. (2005), The Usability of Digital Ink Technologies for Children and Teenagers. HCI2005, Edinburgh, Scotland, Springer.[PDF]
Read, J. C. and Gregory, P. (2001), Using Groupwise to Stimulate Academic Discussion with Computing Students, 2nd Annual Conference of LTSN, Centre for Information and Computer Science, London, England. [PDF]
Read, J. and Gregory, P. (2002), FleSCA - Flexible Student Centred Assessment. LTSN 3rd AnnualConference, Loughborough, England. [PDF]
Read, J. C., Gregory, P., MacFarlane, S. J., McManus, B., Gray, P. and Patel, R. (2002), An Investigation of Participatory Design with Children - Informant, Balanced and Facilitated Design, Interaction Design and Children, pp.53-64, Ed. Bekker, M. M., Markopoulos, P. and Kersten-Tsikalkina, M., Maastricht, Shaker.[PDF]
Read, J. C., Gregory, A. J., Taylor, K. and Sim, G. (2003), FlesCA - A la carte assessment, 4th Annual LTSN-ICS Conference, Galway, Eire.[PDF]
Read, J. and Horton, M. (2004), Demonstrating CobWeb - An Innovative Writing Environment for Children. World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Lugano, Switzerland, AACE. [PDF]
Read, J. and Horton, M. (2004), The Usability of Digital tools in the Primary Writing Classroom. World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Lugano, Switzerland, AACE. [PDF]
Read, J., Horton, M., Mazzone, E. (2005), The Design of Digital Tools for the Primary Writing Classroom, World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Montreal, Canada. [PDF]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Casey, C. (2001), Measuring the Usability of Text Input Methods for Children, HCI2001, Lille, France, Springer-Verlag 2001.[PDF]
Read, J., MacFarlane, S. and Casey, C. (2002), Endurability, Engagement and Expectations: Measuring Children's Fun. Interaction Design and Children, Eindhoven, Shaker Publishing.[PDF]
Read, J., MacFarlane, S. and Casey, C. (2002), Oops! Silly me! Errors in a Handwriting Recognition-based Text entry Interface for Children. NordiCHI 2002, Aarhus, Denmark, ACM Press. [PDF]
Read, J., MacFarlane, S. and Casey, C. (2002), Pens Behaving badly - Usability of Pens and Graphics Tablets for Text Entry with Children. ACM UIST'02, Paris, France. [PDF]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Casey, C. (2003), A comparison of two on-line handwriting recognition methods for unconstrained text entry by children, HCI2003, Bath, England. [PDF]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Casey, C. (2003), What's going on? : Discovering what Children Understand about Handwriting Recognition Interfaces, IDC2003, Preston, England.[PDF]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Casey, C. (2003),'Good Enough for What?' Acceptance of Handwriting Recognition Errors by Child Users, IDC2003, Preston, England.[PDF]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Casey, C. (2004), CobWeb – a handwriting recognition based writing environment for children, EARLI SIG Writing, Geneva.[PDF]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Gregory, P. (2004), Requirements for the Design of a Handwriting Recognition based Writing Interface for Children, IDC2004, Maryland, USA. [PDF]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Horton, M. (2004), The Usability of Handwriting Recognition for Writing in the Primary Classroom, HCI2004, Leeds, UK.[PDF]
Read, J., MacFarlane, S., Kelly, R., Mazzone, E., Horton, M. (2006),The ChiCI Group, submitted to HCI Overview at CHI2006, Montreal, Canada. [PDF]
Read, J., Mazzone, E., Horton, M. (2005), Recognition Errors and Recognizing Errors - Children Writing on the Tablet PC, Tenth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Rome, Italy. [PDF]
Read, J. C., Mazzone, E., and Horton, M. (2005), Recognition Errors and Recognizing Errors - Children Writing on the Tablet PC. Lecture Notes in Computer Science: 1096 - 1099. [PDF]
Read, J., Mazzone, E., and Höysniemi, J. (2005), Wizard of Oz Evaluations with Children – Deception and Discovery, Interaction Design and Children 2005, Colorado, USA. [PDF]
Read, J. C., Sim, G., Gregory, P. and Taylor, K. (2004), Using a Web Based Tool to Innovate Assessment Practices, EDMEDIA2004, Geneva, Switzerland. [PDF]
Sim, G. and Horton, M. (2005), Performance and Attitude of Children in Computer Based Versus Paper Based Testing, World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Montreal. [PDF]
Sim, G., MacFarlane, S., and Horton, M. (2005), Evaluating usability, fun and learning in educational software for children, World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Montreal. [PDF]
Sim, G., MacFarlane, S., and Read, J. (2006), All Work and No Play: Measuring Fun, Usability, and Learning in Software for Children, Accepted for publication in Computers and Education Journal. [PDF]
Snape, L., C. Casey, et al. (1997), Using Speech in Multimedia Applications, TCD Conference on Multimedia.
Snape, L., Casey, C., MacFarlane, S.J., and Robertson, I. (1997), Using Speech in Multimedia Applications, TCD Conference on Multimedia, Vol 7(7) Teaching Company Scheme Directorate Seminar Proceedings, pp50-60, ISBN 1-901255-08-5.
Snape, L. (1999) SPEL - System for Phonic Early Learning, International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. INTERACT '99 Vol 1(12), pp694-695, ISBN 0-9673355-0-7.
Xu, Dongjie. (2003), Multimedia Software to Motivate Ethnic Minority Children to Learn about Their Culture and Language of Origin, Interaction Design and Children 2003, Preston, UK. [PDF]
Xu, Dongjie. (2005), Using MCAI to Arouse Interest of British Children of Chinese origin in Learning Mandarin. Journal of Overseas Chinese Education, Volume 6, Issue 1, pp. 48-53, China.
Xu, Dongji. and Nicholson, I. (2005), Harmonious Interface Design, British HCI Conference 2005, Proceedings, pp. 58 - 62, ACM Press. [PDF]
Danino, N. and Mazzone, E. (2004), The Challenges of Mobile Computing in Education: a survey of the primary issues, at the 7th HCI Educators Workshop, Preston, 36-40. [PDF]Fano, F., Mazzone, E., Toccafondi, G., and Torsi, S. (2005), Tasting the Wine Culture: the Design of an Experience, at 1 st International Workshop "Re-Thinking Technology in Museums", Limerick, Ireland. [PDF]
Höysniemi, J and Read, J. C (2005), Wizard of Oz Studies with Children, Workshop on Child Computer Interaction: Methodological Research at Interact 2005, Rome, Italy. [PDF]
Kano, A., (2005), Evaluating Phrase Sets for Use with Text Entry Method Evaluation with Dyslexic Participants, Workshop on Improving and Assessing Pen-Based Input Techniques at British HCI 2005, Edinburgh, England. [PDF]
Kano, A. and Read, J.C (2005), Doing Girly Stuff in Semi structured Design Activities – and the Point is?, Workshop on Child Computer Interaction: Methodological Research at Interact 2005, Rome, Italy. [PDF]
MacFarlane, S. and Pasiali, A. (2005), Adapting the Heuristic Evaluation Method for Use with Children. In Workshop on Child Computer Interaction: Methodological Research at Interact 2005, Rome, Italy. [PDF]
Mazzone, E., Kelly, R., and Xu, Diana. (2005), Studying children's interactions with tangible devices: How will the video help?, Workshop on Child Computer Interaction: Methodological Research at INTERACT 2005 Conference, Rome, Italy. [PDF]
Read, J. C. (2005) On the application of text input metrics to handwritten text input, Text Input Workshop, Dagstuhl., Germany.[PDF]
Read J. C and Fine, K (2005), Using Survey Methods for Design and Evaluation in Child Computer Interaction. Workshop on Child Computer Interaction: Methodological Research at Interact 2005, Rome, Italy. [PDF]
Xu, Diana., Mazzone, E., and MacFarlane, S. (2005), Informant Design with Children - Designing Children's Tangible Technology, 1st International Workshop:"Re-Thinking Technology in Museums", Limerick, Ireland. [PDF]
Gregory, P. and Read, J. C. (2001), Positive perspectives - using web page development to change student attitudes to learning maths, Presentation at Computers and Learning, Warwick, UK. [PPT]
Nicol, A. and C. Casey (2003), CAL interface design for young children: a case study in literacy. CAL '03, Belfast, NI. [PDF]
Read, J. C. and Gregory, P. (2002), Peer Mentoring for Computing Undergraduates, Presentation at the LTSN - ICS Student Support Seminar, Preston, England. [PPT]
Read, J. and MacFarlane, S. (2000), Measuring Fun - Usability Testing for Children. Computers and Fun 3, York, England, BCS HCI Group. [PDF] [PPT]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Casey, C. (2000), Where's the 'M' on the keyboard Mummy?, Womens Engineering Society, Preston, UK. [PPT]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J., and Casey, C. (2001), Expectations and Edurability - Measuring Fun, Computers and Fun 4, York, UK 2001. [PDF], [PPT]
Read, J.C., MacFarlane, S.J., and Casey, C. (2001), Can Natural Language recognition technologies be used to enhance the learning experience of young children?, Computers and Learning, Warwick, UK 2001. [PDF]
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J. and Casey, C. (2001), Expectations and Endurability - Measuring Fun, Presentation at Computers and Fun 4, York, England. Slides from FUN2001. [PPT]
Read, J., MacFarlane, S. and Casey, C. (2002), Designing a Handwriting Recognition Based Writing Environment for Children. 8th International EARLI SIG Writing Conference, Staffordshire, England. [PDF]
Sim, G., MacFarlane, S.J. & Read, J.C. (2005), All work and no play: Measuring the effects of fun on learning in software for children. CAL'05 Virtual Learning, Bristol. [PDF]
Mazzone, E., Read, J. (2005), Not just bits of paper - design sessions with children, Journal of the Department of Computing, Issue n.4, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. [PDF]
Nicol, A. (2002), Help! What do I do now? Interactive Help for Young Children - A Case Study, Comp@uclan, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, England. [PDF]
Nicol, A., C. Casey, et al. (2002), Interface Design for Infant Children: A Case Study in Literacy. Comp@uclan, Penrith, England.
Read, J. C. (2002), How Close is close enough? - A discussion of effectiveness metrics for recognition-based computer systems. Paper presented at UCLan Department of Computing Conference (Sept 2002), Preston, England.
Read, J. C (2003), Designing Evaluations to Evaluate Designs, Paper presented at UCLan Department of Computing Conference (May 2003), Preston, England. [PDF]
Read, J. C. (2005), Deceit, Distortion and Decision – Choosing Phrase Sets for Text Entry Research, Comp@uclan, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, England. [PDF]
Read, J. C., C. Casey, S. MacFarlane (2003), A Fine-Grained Approach to Evaluating Recognition Erorrs When Using Handwritten Text Input Designing Evaluations to Evaluate Designs,Comp@uclan, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, England. [PDF]
Read, J. and S. MacFarlane (2002), Fun as a Usability Metric, Comp@uclan, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire.
Read, J., S. MacFarlane, et al. (2002), Measuring the Effectiveness of Recognition Based Interfaces, Comp@uclan, Penrith, England.
Read, J., S. MacFarlane, et al. (2002), Modelling Disobedient Interfaces. Comp@uclan, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, England.
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J. and Casey, C. (2001) Describing disobedient interfaces, Paper presented at UCLan Department of Computing Conference, Preston, England. [PDF]
Xu, Diana. (2005), Tangible User Interface for Children – An Overview at UCLAN Department of Computing Conference, Preston, UK. [PDF]
Read, J. C. (2003), Reflections on the State of HCI as it Reaches 17, Interface September 2003. [PDF]Read, J. C. (2005), The ABC of CCI. in Interfaces 62: 8 - 9.
Read, J. C. (2005), Simply the best - Gorgeousness in the user interface, Interface April 2005 [PDF]
Read, J. C. (2005), Change, Caps Lock and creativity. Interfaces 63: 10. [PDF]
Read, J. and Horton, M. (2004). The Possibilities for Digital tools for Writing. Learning Technology Newsletter 6(4), October 2004 p42-43 [PDF]
Danino, N., and MacFarlane, S.J. (2000), Can we make the World Wide Web Accessible to Everyone?, Poster presented at HCI2000, Sunderland, UK 2000.Danino, N., and MacFarlane, S.J. (2001), Images on the web: A Suitable Alternative, Poster presented at IHM/HCI2001, Lille, France 2001.
Gregory, P. and Read, J. C. (2000), Making Maths Matter: Using Active Learning to improve Student Motivation, Poster presented at 1st Annual Conference of the LTSN Centre for Information and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh,,LTSN-ICS, pp. 146.
Gregory, P.and Read, J. C.(2002), Keeping students Afloat - Strategies to Support Study, Poster presented at 3rd Annual Conference of LTS Centre for Information and Computer Science, Loughborough, England.
Gregory, P. and Read, J. C. (2003), What makes them stay? The Survivors' Tale, Poster presented at 4th Annual Conference of LTSN Centre for Information and Computer Science , Galway, Eire.
Read, J. C. (2005), When Worlds Collide - Digital Ink and the QWERTY Keyboard. Less is More, Cambridge, UK, Microsoft. [PDF]
Read, J. C. and Gregory, P. (2002), FleSCA – Flexible Student Centred Assessment, Poster presented at 3rd Annual Conference of LTSN Centre for Information and Computer Science, Loughborough, England. [PDF]
Read, J. C. and Gregory, P. (2003), The How Can I (HCI) Toolkit, Poster presented at 4th Annual Conference of LTSN Centre for Information and Computer Science, Galway, Eire.
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J. and Casey, C. (2000), 'Postcards to Grandad'- A study of Handwriting Recognition with Young Children, Poster presented at HCI 2000, Sunderland, England,, Vol. 2 51-52. Paper from HCI2000. [PDF]
Read, J., MacFarlane, S. and Casey, C. (2001), Can Natural Language Recognition Technologies be used to Enhance the Learning Experience of Young Children? Poster presented atComputers and Learning 2001, Warwick, UK.
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J. and Casey, C. (2002), Pens Behaving Badly - Usability of Pens and Graphics Tablets for Text Entry with Children, Poster at ACM UIST02, Paris, France.
Read, J. C., MacFarlane, S. J. and Casey, C. (2003), 'Good enough for what?' Acceptance of Handwriting Recognition Errors by Child Users. Poster presented at the International Design and Children Conference, Preston, England. [PDF]
Snape, L., Nicol, T. and, MacFarlane, S. (2003), Phonics for Young Children: a Computer Based Approach, Poster in Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children 2003, New York: ACM, 157.
Höysniemi, J. and Read, J. C. (2005), Wizard of Oz with Children - ethical dilemmas and experiences from the field, IDC2005, Boulder, Colorado.MacFarlane, S., Nicol, T., Read, J. and Snape, L. (Eds) (2003), Small Users Big Ideas: Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children 2003, New York: ACM.
MacFarlane, S. J., Read, J.C., Höysniemi, J. and Markopoulos, P. (2003), Evaluating Interactive Products for and with Children; Tutorial presented at Interact 2003, Zurich, Switzerland.
MacFarlane, S. J., Read, J.C., Höysniemi, J. and Markopoulos, P. (2004), Evaluating Interactive Products for and with Children; Tutorial presented at CHI2004, Vienna, Austria.
MacFarlane, S. J., Read, J.C., Höysniemi, J. and Markopoulos, P. (2004), Evaluating Interactive Products for and with Children; Tutorial presented at IDC2004, Maryland, USA.
MacFarlane, S., J. Read, J. Höysniemi and P. Markopoulos (2004), Tutorial: Evaluating Interactive Products for and with Children. HCI2004, Leeds, UK.
Markopoulos, P., Höysniemi, J., Read, J., and MacFarlane, S. (2005), Workshop: Child Computer Interaction: Methodological Research. In Buono, P., Costabile, M. F., Paternó, F., Santoro, C. I, (Eds.) Interact'05 Communicating Naturally with Computers, Adunct Proceedings, Edizioni Giuseppe Laterza, p95-96.
McManus, B. and Read, J. (2004), 7th Educators Workshop: Effective Teaching and Training in University of Central Lancashire, LTSN Press. ISBN: 0954192753.
Read, J. C. and Gray, P. (2005), Workshop:Improving and Assessing Pen-Based Input Techniques. HCI2005, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Read, J. and J. Höysniemi (2004), Wizard of Oz Evaluations: Safe and Sound, Tutorial delivered at NordiCHI 2004, Tampere, Finland.
MacFarlane, S. (2006), Working Ethically in Research with Children, EDean UK Workshop: The Practical Application of Ethical Guidelines for Participative Research, Hendon, Jan 23.Read, J. C. (2001), Research with children. Seminar presented to staff and students at UCLAN, Preston, UK.
Read, J. (2004), Children evaluating and designing their own technologies – what can we learn about age and gender stereotypes? Presented at Digiplay 3 seminar, Preston.
Designing User Experiences for ChildrenBy Heather Nam
Published: May 17, 2010
“Children, as an audience, do not differ dramatically from adults when it comes to navigation and usability issues. When creating Web sites for children, we should follow the same techniques and conventions we would use when designing for adults.”
Creating a great experience for Web site users should always take the users’ perspectives into consideration. While a user’s age can be a contributing factor in a design’s success for a particular user, demographic information should not trump design conventions. Then, why do UX designers struggle when creating Web sites for children?
The best rule of thumb: We must consider that children, as an audience, do not differ dramatically from adults when it comes to navigation and usability issues. When creating Web sites for children, we should follow the same techniques and conventions we would use when designing for adults.
This is not to say that content, themes, characters, and other forms of engagement should not cater to the intended target audience. On the contrary, when we design a site for preschoolers, the site should look like we’ve designed it for preschoolers—when it comes to colors, sounds, and, sometimes, even interactions. A young user’s ability to read is another important consideration, and creates the need for verbal instructions and limited text. But there are standard best practices we should always follow in any design, regardless of the age of the audience.
I’m talking about navigation, ease of use, usability with a capital U. Today, parents and preschools introduce toddlers and preschoolers to computers when, in the past, most of us were just learning to walk. But think about the process of walking—it works pretty much the same for all of us. At some point, we all learned to put one foot in front of the other and move forward.
Now, think back to the first time you used a computer mouse—how you watched the pointer dance across the screen, how you could pick objects up in one place and drop them in another, how the click of a button could turn a page or take you to a whole new world. It didn’t take you long to figure out the difference between left-clicking and right-clicking, that some things don’t open unless you double-click, that dragging and dropping makes life so much easier. Given how quickly a child’s brain grows and how rapidly children can absorb information, why should we design user interfaces that dumb down their process of learning to use a mouse?
Results from Recent Studies
“Being in a lab environment helped the participants focus on the tasks at hand and provided fewer distractions than might exist in another environment.”
The Mediabarn User Experience Lab conducted four separate usability studies between September 2009 and February 2010, completing individual test sessions with about 85 children aged 3 to 9 years old. For part of the test, we created a child-friendly environment within our lab. We included a tall chair for the kids that didn’t swivel—so we could capture their expressions using a video camera—and a small table with crayons and coloring books for test participants to use while we talked with their parents, as well as to keep siblings entertained. In addition to a cash incentive for parents, we gave each child an educational DVD and a balloon. For the rest of the test, we visited the children at school and set up a mobile lab facility. These participants attended the study on their own, without family members, and each received a small book as a thank-you. Throughout all of these tests, we found that being in a lab environment helped the participants focus on the tasks at hand and provided fewer distractions than might exist in another environment.
The primary test objective was to understand how children would interact with a user interface that let them watch video clips and play interactive games online. At first blush, from an engagement standpoint, these tests seemed to be highly successful. The children loved spending time using a computer to interact with games and videos that were full of familiar characters and had themes that were immensely engaging.
“Children prefer to use a mouse, trackball, or trackpad rather than the keyboard. Since they generally have no need to type, they are more comfortable pointing and clicking than using arrow keys.”
A key finding, however, was that the children were puzzled by some of the apparently random ways in which we had expected them to interact with the games and the video player. Specifically, children prefer to use a mouse, trackball, or trackpad rather than the keyboard. Since they generally have no need to type, they are more comfortable pointing and clicking than using arrow keys.
We also found that it was difficult for children to use the Web site when tools such as scroll bars, scrubber bars, up and down arrows, and left and right arrows fell below the fold. Placing these controls at the bottom of a page made it difficult for children who never scrolled to the bottom of the page to see them.
Drag-and-drop functionality was another stumbling block for some of our youngest test participants, who had difficulty with this. However, most of the kids who were 5 years old and older were able to select an object by pressing the mouse button, holding it down to drag an object across the screen, then releasing the mouse button to place the object in a new location.
Some difficulty stemmed from our click-and-stick functionality, which let kids grab an object by clicking it once, then click again to release it. Older children became confused when they had to learn a new behavior to get the game to respond properly. While this deviation from a standard user interface made selection slightly simpler for newer mouse users, it actually made it more difficult for family members to help them when they had difficulty.
Many children recognized the standard play/pause, rewind, and fast-forward buttons in the video and music players, and several were familiar with the scrubber bar, which indicated the amount of time remaining in a clip. However, we found just as many were unfamiliar with these tools.
Design Conventions
Based on our findings from these studies, we have developed a set of suggested standards and design conventions to follow when considering usability for children, shown in Table 1.
Table 1—User interface design conventions for children
Ages 3–5 Nonreaders and emerging readers; emerging mouse control and dexterity
Ages 5–7 Early readers
Ages 7+ Already know standard mouse interactions
Avoid using pop-up windows. It’s much easier for small children to click a Back button.
Create user interfaces comprising multiple windows, if necessary. Older children can more easily switch back and forth between windows.
Reduce the amount of or eliminate text, replacing it with simple, concise voice-overs. Repetitive instructions that explain how to manipulate a Web site’s controls and the goals of a game are always helpful.
Give users the ability to skip voice-overs and instructions.
Reduce the number of buttons, controls, and other clickable elements and increase their size to ensure young mousers can easily hit their intended targets.
—
Avoid the need to move objects across the screen.
Use standard drag-and-drop interactions.
For all children aged 3 and older: Always place navigational controls above the fold.
Use a red X button to close a window. Even kids understand this convention.
Do not design navigation that requires children to use the arrow keys on the keyboard.
Consider including a brief tutorial on how player controls work—play/pause, rewind, and fast-forward buttons.
Keep in mind that children usually do not play on a computer in a vacuum. For the tests we conducted with the youngest children—aged 3 to 5 years old—we involved their parents. In many cases, older siblings were also in the room. Whenever a user got stuck or had trouble with navigation, either the mother or an older sibling would jump in and help. When UX designers create customized user interfaces for children, it becomes more difficult for others to help them. Parents and older children are already accustomed to conventional navigation. When they have to decipher an entirely new user interface, it slows down the whole family—so stick with standard design conventions.
Designing with Respect
“Poor usability confuses the intended target market—the children—and impacts other family members who try to help them.”
User groups that include children certainly present challenges to UX designers. We must be cognizant of our audience, but designers can create great user experiences, regardless of our users’ age range. Poor usability confuses the intended target market—the children—and impacts other family members who try to help them. Most important, we should not develop new user interface design conventions just because our audience includes children. Instead, we should limit interactions to standard design conventions, employing those that are easiest for children to use. When it comes to usability, we should treat children with the same respect as adults.
Topic: UX Design
Markavian wrote:
Thanks for the great article, Heather. We’ve just performed some basic kids testing with 8-10 year olds; so I was interested to compare your findings with our own. The game has been built with dual controls for Point and Click movement and Keyboard control. The more experienced children (gamers) instinctively used keyboard for movement, but switched to the mouse for accessing menus. The other children, who had had limited—1 hour a day?—access to computers used the mouse solely.
When presented with a keyboard-control-only minigame: “Pressing and holding” to activate an element was poorly understood. Also, we’ve found that we’ve put too much text in the instructions and need to simplify the controls.
Hope that’s helpful to any budding game developers.
Best regards, Mkv
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Approaches to User Research When Designing for ChildrenPublished: March 7, 2011
“We are now seeing even higher adoption of technology among children—thanks to the unpredictably intuitive interaction of youngsters with touchscreen technologies and mobile devices that they can carry everywhere and use at any time.”
I am writing this first installment of my column Designing for Children as I observe my three-year-old son playing a game for preschoolers on a touchscreen mobile device. It is incredibly interesting to see how easy and natural it is for him to interact with technology, and at the same time, remember the many challenges I had to face when I started using computers—and technology in general.
Children’s exposure to computing devices depends on a great variety of factors—including cultural traditions, economic power, and family values. But there is no doubt that, in general, children’s access to technological devices and interactive products has increased dramatically in recent years. We are now seeing even higher adoption of technology among children—thanks to the unpredictably intuitive interaction of youngsters with touchscreen technologies and mobile devices that they can carry everywhere and use at any time.
As a result, it is important that we, as designers of interactive products, understand what is different in the development of digital applications that we’re targeting specifically for children. What are the implications for the UX design and user research methods we have traditionally followed?
I’ll dedicate my column Designing for Children to the examination of UX design and user research topics within the context of designing for young audiences—up to 15 years of age. The topics I’ll cover will range from the definition of design requirements, to UX design, user interface design, and visual design, to user research methods. The focus of this first installment of my column is primarily on user research with children.
Conducting User Research with Children
“Conducting user research is a vital part of the product development process and enables designers to discover how to provide meaningful interactive experiences for kids in a specific age range.”
One of the biggest challenges of designing interactive experiences for children is creating age-appropriate experiences—in terms of content, functionality, interactions, and visual design. It is often difficult for UX designers to step out of their adult point of view and really immerse themselves in a child’s world, while avoiding being either condescending or too tough.
Similar to any other design project that follows a user-centered approach, UX design projects for children also require a thorough knowledge of your audience. Conducting user research is a vital part of the product development process and enables designers to discover how to provide meaningful interactive experiences for kids in a specific age range.
To illustrate the differences that can emerge when conducting user research with children—in comparison to research methods we traditionally use with adults—here is an overview of some of the many methods of conducting user research with children that are currently in use in both industry and academia.
Co-creating with Children
“Have a clear idea of what you need to achieve during each research session, and select user types accordingly.”
Although their results are harder to analyze, participatory research methods with kids often provide great insights when designers are present during the sessions and able to directly interact with the children.
For example, LEGO has a history of collaboration between designers and users during the early stages of projects—when designers and users co-create and validate each other’s ideas. For products like Mindstorms, LEGO chooses lead users to aid the designers through brainstorming sessions. Mutual feedback helps designers avoid potential misconceptions before they become crucial mistakes. [1]
In the academic sector, Dr. Allison Druin, of the University of Maryland, has conducted extensive research on designing interactive experiences for children, working with children. Her work provides great inspiration for ways of involving children in the product development process. [2]
Some general guidelines to consider when co-creating with children include the following:
- Define clear objectives. Have a clear idea of what you need to achieve during each research session, and select user types accordingly. Do you need expert users to help you design a new level for a well-established game? Or do you need children who are completely new to the type of product you are designing?
- Promote a casual and fun atmosphere. Always keep in mind that you are collaborating with children as design partners. Therefore, it is important to promote a casual atmosphere in which every child feels confident in sharing his or her story. Do not talk down to kids. Try to ask open-ended questions, and suggest that they elaborate on their ideas. Most important, make the children feel part of the process and keep an open mind. For example, if children are expert users, allow them to take the lead in the conversation at some points, and listen carefully so you can learn from them.
- Bring plenty of materials. No matter what the age of the children you are working with, always have a variety of materials on hand that can help children to better express themselves. These might include colored pencils, paper, sticky notes, Play-Doh, clay, paper images, and scissors. Allowing children to draw or express themselves through means other than just talking helps you to understand their ideas. This is especially important when working with children below seven years of age. If you already have some ideas that need validation, it is best to show the children drawings that you’ve printed on paper or hand-drawn sketches, because these give them the feeling that what they’re seeing is still a work in progress. Let the children draw or write on these sketches. Even though a project is still in its early stages, coded prototypes look more finished, so it’s not as easy for children to critique them or imagine how they could be different.
- Do group activities. When working with children above eleven years of age, co-creation activities benefit greatly from discussion—between both researchers and the children and children and their peers. Sessions with groups of up to six children are manageable. When children are older, are experienced users, and are fans of the product you are working on, co-creation sessions can be very engaging and last for as long as two hours. However, to ensure the children do not lose their focus on the activity, you should plan for most sessions to last just one hour. On the other hand, when working with younger children, it is important to reduce the size of the group. An optimal number would be three kids per researcher. This allows children to have discussions with their peers, if they are inclined to do so, but also lets the researchers keep all of the participants engaged and maintain better control over the session.
- Invite parents or teachers to participate, as necessary. Involving parents or teachers is especially important if you are working with young children or are doing research for interactive products that kids use with supervision or the help of their adult caregivers. Inviting adults with whom the children are familiar can also help you to establish communication with children below six years of age. It is important for researchers to understand what expectations and thoughts parents and teachers have about a product, as well as to take advantage of their knowledge about a particular child’s development.
Using Online Research Panels with Children
“Make use of forums and message boards for online communities to create online research panels for children….”
Research companies like Touchstone Research—which specializes in marketing research with children and teens [3]—often make use of forums and message boards for online communities to create online research panels for children or adults. These online platforms let designers and marketers get in contact with children, no matter where in the world they are, and involve them in user research or usability testing.
When using online research panels with either children or adults, here are some guidelines to keep in mind:
- Online research panels are generally most effective when you use them for large-scale projects that target users of various ages throughout the world, during the brainstorming phase of your projects.
- You can take advantage of these online panels to gather insights in many different ways—from posting a survey comprising closed questions to get statistical results; to letting children submit ideas on a specific topic, then rate or discuss them with other kids. This helps designers understand what is important to a product’s core users and what ideas resonate more for a group of participants as a whole.
- Online panels can be either open or closed to the public, depending on the amount of data you need to gather and the specific types of users you are targeting. For example, if you are working specifically with children between six and eight years old, who live in Australia, you should allow access only to those users who meet these criteria. Provide participants with user names and passwords they can use to access your panel.
- If you have asked children for their feedback on some ideas, be prepared to communicate with them often. Children get excited about collaborating with you and giving their opinions, and they expect you to keep the conversation going and to comment on their feedback and ideas as well.
Doing Focus Groups with Children
“Do focus groups to discover what children perceive and feel about current digital experiences—and what you should improve or keep the same.”
Companies generally use focus groups to test products that are already on the market, but focus groups can also be useful for interactive design projects. You can do focus groups to discover what children perceive and feel about current digital experiences—and what you should improve or keep the same. For example, children might discuss their feelings about social networks; massive, multiplayer online games; texting, or chatting.
Here are some guidelines to follow when conducting focus groups with children:
- Use a screener to recruit children who are very familiar with the experience or product you would like to discuss. In general, focus groups are a great tool to use with pre-teens and teens.
- Encourage children not only to discuss their feelings, but also to create mind maps to help them understand the relationships between the ideas that come up as they discuss a product. Do this with the aid of materials like printed images and words and sticky notes.
- In addition, Professor Thomas M. Archer [4], of The Ohio State University, recommends that you do the following:
- Define age-appropriate questions that use casual language.
- If possible, recruit participants who know each other.
- Keep sessions’ duration under one hour.
- Gather children in groups of five or six, in the same age range—preferably older than six years of age.
Interviewing Children in Friendship Pairs
“A good alternative method of interviewing can be friendship pairs, in which you gather pairs of children who know each other well and share an interest that relates to the experience you are designing.”
In general, traditional interviewing methods can be hard to use with children. When you want to ask children questions or hear their opinions, a good alternative method of interviewing can be friendship pairs, in which you gather pairs of children who know each other well and share an interest that relates to the experience you are designing.
For example, this approach is especially useful when testing multiplayer computer games or high-fidelity prototypes. Children can sit side by side and comment between themselves about an experience they are sharing. It is one method Jakob Nielsen and his team used when testing how kids between the ages of three and twelve use children’s Web sites. [5]
Some guidelines to keep in mind when conducting interviews with children in friendship pairs include the following:
- Be an active listener, and encourage kids to talk to each other throughout each session.
- If children are not very expressive when talking about certain topics between themselves, try asking them questions to promote discussion.
- If one child is confused or scared to comment, ask the other child to explain the topic of discussion in his or her own words. This can help you gain a better understanding of the children’s mental models and how best to support their interactive experience.
Child-Development Theory
“Three key aspects of child development … influence the development of interactive experiences for children….”
Reading a variety of child-development publications can be helpful when you’re starting a user research project with children. Refer to the following references for information about how child development relates to design for children:
When reviewing this literature, keep in mind the age of the children for whom you’re designing a product, and look for information about three key aspects of child development that influence the development of interactive experiences for children:
- motor and physical development
- How do children manipulate a mouse or keyboard at certain ages?
- Can children easily interact with the small keyboards and limited screen real estate of most mobile devices?
- Can they easily grab objects, point, and draw?
- How do they perceive objects visually?
- What physical and motor activities do children enjoy doing at a given age?
- social skills
- Do children enjoy and are they capable of playing with their peers?
- At what age do children enjoy discussing topics in a group?
- At what age are they interested in forming virtual friendships?
- cognitive skills
- How and when do children recognize colors, shapes, symbols, sounds, and conventional icons in user interfaces?
- At what age do children recognize letters, words, and numbers?
- How long is a child’s typical attention span at a given age?
- What seems challenging or easy for children to do?
- How have companies developed other products for the same age range?
- To what kinds of questions are children able to respond—open or closed?
- What are children’s language skills?
- How can you better support children’s mental models?
Other Research Methods
“There are a number of other user research methods that researchers have used with children who are older than about 12 years of age.”
There are a number of other user research methods that researchers have used with children who are older than about 12 years of age. For the most part, the same guidelines apply to these methods as when conducting user research with adults. A few of these methods are card sorting, user scenarios, personas, storytelling experience journals, cultural analyses, behavioral observation, surveys, questionnaires, and ethnographic studies.
Some Final Thoughts
The primary focus of this first column has been on presenting some research methods that are useful when conducting user research with children—in both industry and academic settings—and guidelines on how to use them. I have not endeavored to provide a comprehensive list of research methods, but instead, have discussed some of the differences that you must take into account when conducting user research with children—in contrast to more traditional user research with adults.
I hope that the information I have provided here can serve as a basis for your careful evaluation of what research methods would be more suitable for you to use and how best to use them, when you are faced with the challenge of taking a user-centered approach to designing interactive experiences for children.
References
[1] Bell, John. “3 Ways LEGO Leads Co-creation.”
The Digital Influence Mapping Project, September 9, 2006. Retrieved January 8, 2011.
[2] Druin, Allison. “Allison Druin: Selected Papers.”
[3] Touchstone Research. “Child Research.”
[4] Archer, Thomas. “Focus Groups for Kids.”
[5] Nielsen, Jakob. “Children’s Websites: Usability Issues in Designing for Kids.”
[6] Wolock, Ellen, Ann Orr, and Warren Buckleitner. Child Development 101 for the Developers of Interactive Media: An Overview of Influential Theories of Child Development, Applied to Practice. Revised edition. Flemington, NJ: Active Learning Associates, 2010.
[7] Ackermann, Edith. “The Whole Child Development Guide.”
[8] Hourcade, Juan Pablo. “Interaction Design and Children.”
[9] Fishel, Catharine. Designing for Children: Marketing Design That Speaks to Kids. Minneapolis, MN: Rockport Publishers, 2001.
Resources
Hains, Rebecca. “Conducting Qualitative Research with Children: Interdisciplinary and Feminist Perspectives for Media Scholars.”
Ooi, Yeevon. “Designing Interactive Products for Children: How Is It Different?”
Topic: Columns | User Research
Eholtzclaw wrote:
Very well done article—good insights on working with this fun and interesting demographic.
We have used “Friendship Pairs” very effectively in our research. We find that an additional benefit of this approach is that, when the kids know each other, they will jog each other’s memory, saying things like “Don’t you remember when you did this or we did that?” leading to some great insights.
And to your point, we see them willingly re-explain concepts and questions to each other in “their words.” That is a fun and sometimes humbling experience for a learned researcher.
Catalina Naranjo-Bock wrote:
Yes, that is very true. When doing “Friendship pairs,” kids start revisiting their own experiences and discussing them. I think this is a very effective method for getting specific insights for a particular project, but also allows the researcher to get immersed in the children’s world and understand it as best as possible.
Thank you for your comment!
Evolvusability wrote:
This is a really interesting column and a topic that I am currently interested in. This discussion offers a nice introduction into methods of user research when designing with children. A good book to recommend for those interested in exploring the field in more detail would be Evaluating Children’s Interactive Products.
I am currently exploring the design of online entertainment for children aged two through six years old. I have only recently started a blog on this topic, opening it with the broad question:
How do we design better online interactions for pre-school children?
Please check it out.
Catalina Naranjo Bock wrote:
That is a great book recommendation. Authors Panos Markopoulos and Janet Read lead good graduate programs in child-computer interaction in Europe.
Thanks for sharing your materials.
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As educators, it is our responsibility to nurture in our students the knowledge and abilities that they need in order to be balanced and productive members of society. While mastery of the basic subjects such as reading and writing, math and the sciences are of course essential to obtaining this goal, many so-called extra-curricular subjects — especially music — are also vital in this effort. For its many tangible benefits, music should be maintained and promoted as an essential component of elementary and secondary education.
For centuries music had been considered an irreplaceable part of a proper education. Early universities taught it as one of the quadrivium or four essential pillars of education.
Einstein once said that had he not been a scientist, he would have been a musician. "Life without playing music is inconceivable for me," he declared. "I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music...I get most joy in life out of music." (Foster)
Albert Einstein himself was a skilled musician and frequently attributed his discoveries in physics to the musical training he received.[1] Modern educational politics, however, have often marginalized music education to a luxurious and expensive “extra” program that is often cut when negative budget issues are met. Education administrators too often mistakenly believe that music education is a misguided effort to channel students into a career in music or, at best, an expensive “play time” that does little for their educational development.
If only those administrators could learn the incredible benefits of music education on students, they might change their minds. Recent studies have indicated that adolescent music education produces greater observable physical development in the brain,[2] and an average of 27% higher math scores,[3] 57 points higher SAT scores[4] and a 46% increase in IQ scores.[5] In addition to these documented benefits on intelligence, music education has been shown enhance learning in all other subject areas by improving their study skills, receptiveness to instruction, social and emotional development. Students that participate in school band or orchestra also experience the lowest rate of gang activity and substance abuse. Most importantly, the cognitive and behavioral advantages of music education are shown to affect all students, regardless of their ethnicity, “at-risk” status, or socio-economic background.[6]
These findings alone should guarantee the inclusion of a robust music program in every primary and secondary school, but the benefits don’t end there. Adolescent music education has been shown to be a reliable predictor of success in college and professional life. It has been reported that approximately 22% more applying music majors are admitted to medical schools than any other major,[7] and that “the very best engineers and technical designers in the Silicon Valley industry are, nearly without exception, practicing musicians.”[8]
My parents raised six boys and one girl, all of whom participated heavily in music during their primary and secondary school years. While I was the only one of us to become a professional musician and music educator, each of my siblings have gone on to successful careers including three doctors, an architect and an engineer. I feel greatly indebted to the many music educators that taught my family and me and am saddened to hear that the opportunities we received are not always available to children. I have made it my personal challenge as a music teacher and choir director to individually reach each of my students and instill in them the skills and appreciation of music that bring such joy to my own life. As a public school teacher, I find great fulfillment knowing that the skills I teach them in music classes and ensembles will not only enable a life-long interest, but will also help them in many other important areas of their lives and contribute to their success in life.
The great violin teacher Shinichi Suzuki said “The purpose of [music] education is to train children, not to be professional musicians but to be fine musicians and to show high ability in any other field they enter.”[9] My experience has taught me that music education uniquely enhances learning and prepares children for successful lives. Along with all the other subjects taught in elementary and secondary schools, I hope that I can bring the world of music into the lives of as many children as I can. In doing so, I know I will make our society just a little bit better by making a big difference in their lives.
Shinchi Suzuki (who was a close friend of Albert Einstein) was a pioneer in early music education, founding the Suzuki Violin School that taught children as soon as they could talk.
[1] Brian Foster, “Einstein and his Love of Music,” Physics World (Jan. 2005), <physicsweb.org>.
[2] G. Schlaug, L. Jancke, Y. Huang and H. Steinmetz, “In vivo morphometry of interhem ispheric assymetry and connectivity in musicians,” Proceedings of the 3rd international conference for music perception and cognition (Liege, Belgium, 1994), 417-418.
[3] Amy Graziano, Matthew Peterson and Gordon Shaw, “Enhanced learning of proportional math through music training and spatial-temporal training,” Neurological Research 21 (March 1999).
[4] College-Bound Seniors National Report: Profile of SAT Program Test Takers. The College Entrance Examination Board, Princeton, NJ, 2001.
[5] Rauscher, Shaw, Levine, Ky and Wright, “Music and Spatial Task Performance: A Causal Relationship,” University of California, Irvine, 1994.
[6] “Benefits of Music Education,” MENC: The National Association for Music Education, 2002.
[7] Lewis Thomas, “The Case for Music in the Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan (February 1994).
[8] Grant Venerable, “The Paradox of the Silicon Savior,” as reported in “The Case for Sequential Music Education in the Core Curriculum of the Public Schools,” The Center for the Arts in the Basic Curriculum, New York, 1989.
[9] Shinichi Suzuki, Nurtured by Love, second ed., Athens OH: Senzay Publications, 1983, 79.Popularity: 100% [?]
The term computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) was first coined by Irene Greif and Paul M. Cashman in 1984, at a workshop attended by individuals interested in using technology to support people in their work.[1] At about this same time, in 1987 Dr. Charles Findley presented the concept of Collaborative Learning-Work.[2] According to Carstensen and Schmidt,[3] CSCW addresses "how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems." On the one hand, many authors consider that CSCW and groupware are synonyms. On the other hand, different authors claim that while groupware refers to real computer-based systems, CSCW focuses on the study of tools and techniques of groupware as well as their psychological, social, and organizational effects. The definition of Wilson (1991)[4] expresses the difference between these two concepts:CSCW [is] a generic term, which combines the understanding of the way people work in groups with the enabling technologies of computer networking, and associated hardware, software, services and techniques.[edit] Central concerns of CSCW
CSCW is a design-oriented academic field that is interdisciplinary in nature and brings together economists, organizational theorists, educators, social psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and computer scientists, among others. The expertise of researchers in various and combined disciplines help researchers identify venuse for possible development. Despite the variety of disciplines, CSCW is an identifiable research field focused on understanding characteristics of interdependent group work with the objective of designing adequate computer-based technology to support such cooperative work.
Essentially, CSCW goes beyond building technology itself and looks at how people work within groups and organizations and the impacts of technology on those processes. CSCW has ushered in a great extent of melding between social scientists and technologists as developers work together to overcome both technical non-technical problems within the same user spaces. For example, many R&D professionals working with CSCW are computer scientists who have realized that social factors play an important role in the development of collaborative systems. On the flip side, many social scientists who understand the increasing role of technology in our social world become “technologists” who work in R&D labs to develop cooperative systems.
Over the years, CSCW researchers have identified a number of core dimensions of cooperative work. A non-exhaustive list includes:
- Awareness: individuals working together need to be able to gain some level of shared knowledge about each other's activities.[5]
- Articulation work: cooperating individuals must somehow be able to partition work into units, divide it amongst themselves and, after the work is performed, reintegrate it.[6][7]
- Appropriation (or tailorability): how an individual or group adapts a technology to their own particular situation; the technology may be appropriated in a manner completely unintended by the designers.[8][9][10]
These concepts have largely been derived through the analysis of systems designed by researchers in the CSCW community, or through studies of existing systems (for example, Wikipedia[citation needed]). CSCW researchers that design and build systems try to address core concepts in novel ways. However, the complexity of the domain makes it difficult to produce conclusive results; the success of CSCW systems are often so contingent on the peculiarities of the social context that it is hard to generalize. Consequently, CSCW systems that are based on the design of successful ones may fail to be appropriated in other seemingly similar contexts for a variety of reasons that are nearly impossible to identify a priori.[11] CSCW researcher Mark Ackerman calls this "divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically" the socio-technical gap and describes CSCW's main research agenda to be "exploring, understanding, and hopefully ameliorating" this gap.[12]
[edit] CSCW Matrix
One of the most common ways of conceptualizing CSCW systems is to consider the context of a system's use. One such conceptualization is the CSCW Matrix, first introduced in 1988 by Johansen; it also appears in Baecker (1995).[13] The matrix considers work contexts along two dimensions: first, whether collaboration is co-located or geographically distributed, and second, whether individuals collaborate synchronously (same time) or asynchronously (not depending on others to be around at the same time).
[edit] Same time/same place
Face to face interaction
[edit] Same time/different place
Remote interaction
[edit] Different time/same place
Continuous task
- Team rooms,
- Large displays
- Post-it
- Warrooms
[edit] Different time/different place
Communication + Coordination
[edit] Challenges in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
[edit] Leadership
Generally, teams working in a CSCW environment need the same types of leadership as other teams. However, research has shown that distributed CSCW teams may need more direction at the time the group is formed than to traditional working groups, largely to promote cohesion and liking among people who may not have as many opportunities to interact in person, both before and after the formation of the working group.[14]
[edit] Creativity
With increased participation in CSCW working environments, researchers have become interested in studying creativity in such forums. However, research has shown that the interface elements of CSCW environments often slow down creative collaboration due to the design of interfaces themselves. There seems to be a gap between what people need socially to engage in creativity and the technical designs available to support such creativity. As such, researchers are continuing to investigate the tools that people need in order to creatively work in groups and are focusing their efforts on developing usable, supportive systems to cultivate creative group input and participation.[15]
[edit] Adoption of Groupware
Groupware goes hand in hand with CSCW. The term refers to software that is designed to support activities of a group or organization over a network and includes email, conferencing tools, group calendars, workflow management tools, etc.[16]
While groupware enables geographically dispersed teams to achieve organizational goals and engage in cooperative work, there are also many challenges that accompany use of such systems. For instance, groupware often requires users to learn a new system, which users may perceive as creating more work for them without much benefit. If team members are not willing to learn and adopt groupware, it is difficult (if not impossible) for the organization to develop the requisite critical mass for the groupware to be useful. Further, research has found that groupware requires careful implementation into a group setting, and product developers have not as yet been able to find the most optimal way to do introduce such systems into organizational environments.[16]
On the technical side, networking issues with groupware often create challenges in using groupware for CSCW. While access to the Internet is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, geographically dispersed users still face challenges of differing network conditions. For instance, web conferencing can be quite challenging if some members have a very slow connection and others are able to utilize high speed connections.[16]
[edit] Intergenerational Groups
One of the recurring challenges in CSCW environments is development of an infrastructure that can bridge cross-generational gaps in virtual teams.[17]
Ideally, system designs will accommodate all team members, but orienting older workers to new CSCW tools can often be difficult. This can cause problems in virtual teams due to the necessity of incorporating the wealth of knowledge and expertise that older workers bring to the table with the technological challenges of new virtual environments. Orienting and retraining older workers to effectively utilize new technology can often be difficult, as they generally have less experience than younger workers with learning such new technologies.
[edit] Advantages of CSCW
While CSCW working environments certainly face challenges, they also provide many advantages as well. For instance, teams that work together asynchronously provide members with the luxury to contribute when they want, from the location of their choosing, thus eliminating the need for members to “synchronize schedules.”[18] CSCW also allows employees with specific expertise to be a part of teams without the concern of geographic restraints.”[19]
CSCW can also result in major cost savings to companies who implement virtual teams and allow employees to work at home by eliminating the need for travel, rented office space, parking, electricity office equipment, etc. Conversely, from the employee’s perspective, commuting costs and time associated with communing are also eliminated.
Further, research has shown that the use of multiple communication threads can increase group participation and contribution from more team members and foster a less egalitarian communication structure.[16][20] Along the same lines, text-based CSCW communication, such as email, allows users to keep a record of communication and can promote long-term collaboration and learning through observing others.[21]
[edit] Challenges in CSCW Research
[edit] Differing Meanings
Even within the CSCW field, researchers often rely on different journals, research, contextual factors and schools of thought, which can result in disagreement and confusion especially when common terms in the field are used in subtly different ways (“user,” “implementation,” etc.) Also, user requirements change over time and are often not clear to participants due to their evolving nature and the fact that requirements are always in flux.[1]
[edit] Identifying User Needs
Because organizations are so nuanced, CSCW researchers often have difficulty deciding which set(s) of tools will benefit a particular group.[22] This is exacerbated by the fact that it is almost impossible to accurately identify user/group/organization needs and requirements because such needs and requirements inevitably change through the introduction of the system itself. Even when researchers study requirements through several iterations, such requirements often change and evolve yet again by the time that researchers have completed a particular iteration of inquiry.
[edit] Evaluation and Measurement
The range of disciplinary approaches leveraged in implementing CSCW systems makes CSCW difficult to evaluate, measure, and generalize to multiple populations. Because researchers evaluating CSCW systems often bypass quantitative data in favor of naturalistic inquiry, results can be largely subjective due to the complexity and nuances of organizations themselves. Possibly as a result of the debate between qualitative and quantitative researchers, three evaluation approaches have emerged in the literature examining CSCW systems. However, each approach faces its own unique challenges and weaknesses:[23]
Methodology-oriented frameworks explain the methods of inquiry available to CSCW researchers without providing guidance for selecting the best method for a particular research question or population.
Conceptual frameworks provide guidelines for determining factors that a researcher should consider and evaluate through CSCW research but fail to link conceptual constructs with methodological approaches. Thus, while researchers may know what factors are important to their inquiry, they may have difficulty understanding which methodologies will result in the most informative findings.
Concept-oriented frameworks provide specific advice for studying isolated aspects of CSCW but lack guidance as to how specific areas of study can be combined to form more comprehensive insight.
[edit] CSCW Conferences
Since 2010, the Association for Computer Machinery has hosted a yearly conference on CSCW in the United States.[24] The conference is held each February and seeks to present research in the design and use of technologies that affect organizational and group work. With the rapidly increasing development of new devices that allow collaboration from different locations and contexts, the CSCW seeks to bring together researchers from across academia and industry to discuss the many facets of virtual collaboration from both social and technical perspectives.
Internationally, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers sponsors the International Conference on Computer Supported Work and Design, which takes place yearly.[25] In addition, the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies sponsors the European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, which is held every two years.[26]
[edit] See also
[edit] CSCW most cited papers
The 47 CSCW Handbook Papers.[27] This paper list is the result of a citation graph analysis of the CSCW Conference. It has been established in 2006 and reviewed by the CSCW Community. This list only contains papers published in one conference; papers published at other venues have also had significant impact on the CSCW community.
The “CSCW handbook”[27] papers were chosen as the overall most cited within the CSCW conference <...> It led to a list of 47 papers, corresponding to about 11% of all papers.
- Dourish, P.; Bellotti, V. (1992). "Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 107–114,. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=143457.143468.
- Grudin, J. (1988). "Why CSCW applications fail: problems in the design and evaluation of organization of organizational interfaces". Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 85–93. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=62266.62273.
- Root, R.W. (1988). "Design of a multi-media vehicle for social browsing". Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 25–38. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=62269.
- Patterson, J.F.; Hill, R.D.; Rohall, S.L.; Meeks, S.W. (1990). "Rendezvous: an architecture for synchronous multi-user applications". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 317–328. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=99332.99364.
- Greenberg, S.; Marwood, D. (1994). "Real time groupware as a distributed system: concurrency control and its effect on the interface". Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 207–217. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=192844.193011.
- Nardi, B.A.; Whittaker, S.; Bradner, E. (2000). "Interaction and outeraction: instant messaging in action". Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 79–88. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358916.358975.
- Hughes, J.A.; Randall, D.; Shapiro, D. (1992). "Faltering from ethnography to design". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 115–122. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=143469.
- Tang, J.C.; Isaacs, E.A.; Rua, M. (1994). "Supporting distributed groups with a Montage of lightweight interactions". Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 23–34. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=192861&dl=GUIDE,.
- Neuwirth, C.M.; Kaufer, D.S.; Chandhok, R.; Morris, J.H. (1990). "Issues in the design of computer support for co-authoring and commenting". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 183–195. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=99354.
- Crowley, T.; Milazzo, P.; Baker, E.; Forsdick, H.; Tomlinson, R. (1990). "MMConf: an infrastructure for building shared multimedia applications". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 329–342. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=99332.99365.
- Roseman, M.; Greenberg, S. (1992). "GROUPKIT: a groupware toolkit for building real-time conferencing applications". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 43–50. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=143457.143460.
- Shen, H.H.; Dewan, P. (1992). "Access control for collaborative environments". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 51–58. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=143461.
- Gaver, W.W. (1992). The affordances of media spaces for collaboration. ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
- Orlikowski, W.J. (1992). Learning from Notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation. ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
- Sun, C.; Ellis, C. (1998). "Operational transformation in real-time group editors: issues, algorithms, and achievements". Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 59–68. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=289469.
- Bly, S.A. (1988). "A use of drawing surfaces in different collaborative settings". Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 250–256. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=62286.
- Leland, M.D.P.; Fish, R.S.; Kraut, R.E. (1988). "Collaborative document production using quilt". Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 206–215. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=62266.62282&type=series.
- Conklin, J.; Begeman, M.L. (1988). "gIBIS: a hypertext tool for exploratory policy discussion". ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 6 (4): 303–331. DOI:10.1145/58566.59297. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=59297. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
- Bentley, R.; Hughes, J.A.; Randall, D.; Rodden, T.; Sawyer, P.; Shapiro, D.; Sommerville, I. (1992). "Ethnographically-informed systems design for air traffic control". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 123–129. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=143470.
- Mantei, M. (1988). "Capturing the capture concepts: a case study in the design of computer-supported meeting environments". Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 257–270. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=62266.62287&type=series.
- Lantz, K.A. (1986). "An experiment in integrated multimedia conferencing". Proceedings of the 1986 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 267–275. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=637069.637106.
- Harrison, S.; Dourish, P. (1996). "Re-place-ing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 67–76. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=240193.
- Roseman, M.; Greenberg, S. (1996). "TeamRooms: network places for collaboration". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 325–333. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=240319.
- Ishii, H. (1990). "TeamWorkStation: towards a seamless shared workspace". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 13–26. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=99337.
- Ressel, M.; Nitsche-ruhland, D.; Gunzenhäuser, R. (1996). "An integrating, transformation-oriented approach to concurrency control and undo in group editors". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 288–297. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=240305.
- Edwards, W.K. (1996). "Policies and roles in collaborative applications". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 11–20. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=240080.240175.
- Bellotti, V.; Bly, S. (1996). "Walking away from the desktop computer: distributed collaboration and mobility in a product design team". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 209–218. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=240080.240256&type=series.
- Ackerman, M.S. (1998). "Augmenting Organizational Memory: A Field Study of Answer Garden". ACM Transactions on Information Systems 16 (3): 203–224. DOI:10.1145/290159.290160. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=290159.290160. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
- Abbott, K.R.; Sarin, S.K. (1994). "Experiences with workflow management: issues for the next generation". Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 113–120. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=192886.
- Resnick, P.; Iacovou, N.; Suchak, M.; Bergstrom, P.; Riedl, J. (1994). GroupLens: an open architecture for collaborative filtering of netnews. ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
- Prakash, A.; Shim, H.S. (1994). "DistView: support for building efficient collaborative applications using replicated objects". Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 153–164. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=192895.
- Streitz, N.A.; Geißler, J.; Haake, J.M.; Hol, J. (1994). "DOLPHIN: integrated meeting support across local and remote desktop environments and LiveBoards". Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 345–358. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=192844.193044.
- Foster, G.; Stefik, M. (1986). "Cognoter: theory and practice of a colab-orative tool". Proceedings of the 1986 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 7–15. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=637069.637072.
- Shen, C.; Lesh, N.B.; Vernier, F.; Forlines, C.; Frost, J. (2002). "Sharing and building digital group histories". Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 324–333. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=587124.
- Sohlenkamp, M.; Chwelos, G. (1994). "Integrating communication, cooperation, and awareness: the DIVA virtual office environment". Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 331–343. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=192844.193041&type=series.
- Olson, J.S.; Teasley, S. (1996). "Groupware in the wild: lessons learned from a year of virtual collocation". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 419–427. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=240080.240353.
- Reder, S.; Schwab, R.G. (1990). "The temporal structure of cooperative activity". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 303–316. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=99332.99363.
- Fish, R.S.; Kraut, R.E.; Chalfonte, B.L. (1990). "The VideoWindow system in informal communication". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 1–11. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=99332.99335.
- Haake, J.M.; Wilson, B. (1992). Supporting collaborative writing of hyperdocuments in SEPIA. ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
- Hudson, S.E.; Smith, I. (1996). "Techniques for addressing fundamental privacy and disruption tradeoffs in awareness support systems". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 248–257. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=240080.240295.
- MacKay, W.E. (1990). "Patterns of sharing customizable software". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 209–221. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=99332.99356&type=series.
- Trigg, R.H.; Suchman, L.A.; Halasz, F.G. (1986). "Supporting collaboration in notecards". Proceedings of the 1986 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 153–162. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=637069.637089.
- Patterson, J.F.; Day, M.; Kucan, J. (1996). "Notification servers for synchronous groupware". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 122–129. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=240080.240232.
- Myers, B.A.; Stiel, H.; Gargiulo, R. (1998). "Collaboration using multiple PDAs connected to a PC". Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 285–294. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=289444.289503.
- Ackerman, M.S.; Halverson, C. (1998). "Considering an organization's memory". Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 39–48. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=289461.
- Teasley, S.; Covi, L.; Krishnan, M.S.; Olson, J.S. (2000). "How does radical collocation help a team succeed?". Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 339–346. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=359005.
- Kuzuoka, H.; Kosuge, T.; Tanaka, M. (1994). "GestureCam: a video communication system for sympathetic remote collaboration". Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 35–43. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=192866.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Grudin, J. (1994). "Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: History and Focus". Computer 27 (5): 19–26. DOI:10.1109/2.291294.
- ^ .Findley, Charles A. 1989. Collaborative Learning-work. Presentation at the Pacific Telecommunications Council 1989 Conference, January 15–20, Honolulu, Hawaii.Collaborative Networked Learning Project – Digital Equipment Corporation. Primary documents stored on Internet Archive
- ^ Carstensen, P.H.; Schmidt, K. (1999). Computer supported cooperative work: new challenges to systems design. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/carstensen99computer.html. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
- ^ Wilson, P. (1991). Computer Supported Cooperative Work: An Introduction. Kluwer Academic Pub.
- ^ Dourish, P.; Bellotti, V. (1992). "Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative workcc. ACM Press New York, NY, USA. pp. 107–114.
- ^ Schmidt, K.; Bannon, L. (1992). "Taking CSCW seriously". Computer Supported Cooperative Work 1 (1): 7–40. DOI:10.1007/BF00752449.
- ^ Strauss, A. (1985). "Work and the Division of Labor". The Sociological Quarterly 26 (1): 1–19. DOI:10.1111/j.1533-8525.1985.tb00212.x.
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- ^ Dourish, P. (2003). "The Appropriation of Interactive Technologies: Some Lessons from Placeless Documents". Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Kluwer Academic Publishers) 12 (4): 465–490. DOI:10.1023/A:1026149119426.
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- ^ "Ackerman, M." (2000). "The Intellectual Challenge of CSCW: The gap between social requirements and technical feasibility". Human-Computer Interaction 15 (2): 179–203. DOI:10.1207/S15327051HCI1523_5.
- ^ Baecker, R.M.; Others, (1995). Readings in human-computer interaction: toward the year 2000. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
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- ^ Convertino, J.; Farooq, U., Rosson, M., Carroll, J., & Meyer, B. (2007). "Supporting intergenerational groups in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW)". Behaviour information technology. 4 26: 275–285.
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[edit] External links
-- Research Project (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam)
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Anton Eliëns, Martijn van Welie, Jacco van Ossenbruggen and Bastiaan Schönhage
Vrije Universiteit, Fac. of Mathematics and Computer Sciences
De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
email: {eliens,martijn,jrvosse,bastiaan}@cs.vu.nl
Abstract
The Web has become a dominant medium for the dissemination of information and, more recently, for collaborative work as well. The focus has been mainly on textual and graphical information, hardly addressing topics related to musical information. We present a framework that makes musical works accessible for Web users by offering high level support for the display of musical material on the Web as well as for live jam sessions.Our framework consists of a browser plug-in that supports the display and editing of scores as well as playing scores by connecting to a shared MIDI server. To participate in a jam session, clients of the MIDI server can also send data in real time, for instance by using a keyboard embedded in a Web page. We discuss the issues involved in displaying musical material on the Web and we sketch the technical architecture of our framework.
Compared to textual and graphical material, the capabilities of the Web for musical information are rather poor. The embedding of music, or sound in general, rarely goes beyond links to raw audio and MIDI files or to streamed audio connections. To display a musical work, HTML authors have to use images containing the score. All of these solutions are very low level as they basically regard music as being just sound (or a picture in the case of a score).
True score files are usually a few orders of magnitude smaller, and the audio signal can be synthesized at the client side at any appropriate sample rate. Additionally, a high-level description of music provides the browser with far more information when compared to the raw samples. In previous work we proposed to transmit musical scores (instead of the raw samples) across the Internet and to add sound synthesis functionality to Web browsers [10], and the use of generic SGML to encode structured documents [2].
In this paper, we describe an experimental framework that offers many of the ingredients for true networked music support including facilities for editing, displaying and playing musical scores as well as facilities for high level exchange of musical material and real-time collaborative work involving music and sound. Our approach is based on traditional music notation and on MIDI for playing facilities. The framework builds upon the work done in the DejaVu project at the Software Engineering section of the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), which resulted in a suite of components for developing distributed Web-aware hypermedia applications [1,2,7,8,9,10,12].
The structure of this paper is as follows. We first describe our solution to exchanging musical information. In particular, we describe our score format and the associated score editor, and how musicians may connect to a shared MIDI server to join a real-time collective improvisation. Next, we outline the architecture underlying our approach to networking music and the web components used for its realization. After sketching some applications of networked music we discuss the merits and shortcomings of our solution and indicate some directions for future research.
The most ambitious markup language for the dissemination of music on the Web is probably the Standard Music Description Language [4]. SMDL expresses a musical work in terms of four basic domains. The logical domain --- the primary focus of SMDL --- is, according to the standard, describable as ``the composer's intentions with respect to pitches, rhythms, harmonies, dynamics, tempi, articulations, accents, etc.''. The central element of the logical domain, the cantus element is an abstract, one-dimensional finite coordinate space onto which musical and non-musical events can be scheduled. This allows for the inclusion of any dependent time sequences (such as automated lighting information) in a musical work. The standard uses HyTime [3] hyperlinking to specify the relations with information from the other three domains: the gestural domain --- describing any number of particular performances (e.g. MIDI files or digital audio) of the work, the visual domain --- describing any number of scores (a printable/displayable version) of the work, and the analytical domain --- comprised of any number of theoretical analyses or commentaries about the information in the three other domains. The addressing power of HyTime makes it possible to link directly into information expressed in other formats, including MIDI files, digital audio recordings or specific score notations, without modification.
Figure 1: The score displayed by the plug-in
Our approach is more modest and we deploy a much simpler SGML representation, primary geared to encode printable/displayable versions of the score (i.e. SMDL's visual domain). However, the format used is sufficiently rich to be able to generate a playable MIDI representation as well. Information which is usually added by performers (in SMDL this is represented in the gestural domain) such as explicit interpretations of tempi, articulations and accents are not supported in the current version.
<SCORE> <TITLE>Corrente</TITLE> <COMPOSER>Antonio Vivaldi</COMPOSER> <STAFF> <MEASURE Sig="3,4" Key=F Clef=Gclef> <NOTE Pos="1,3" Stem=down>d6 4 0 <REST Pos="3,6">C6 8 0 <NOTE Pos="4,6" Stem=up>a5 8 0 <NOTETUPLE Stem=down> <NOTE Pos="5,6">f5 8 0</NOTE> <NOTE Pos="6,6">a5 8 0</NOTE> </NOTETUPLE> </MEASURE> ... </STAFF> </SCORE>
Figure 2: An SGML encoded score
To support display and editing of SGML scores on the Web, we developed the Amuse score editor as a plug-in for our Web browser (see figure 1). The editor has a graphical user interface and does not require any SGML knowledge from the user. Figures 2 and 3 show, respectively, a fragment of an example score file, and the associated style sheet with a CSS1-like syntax [5]. Both documents can be edited by the graphical score editor plug-in. Changes in the style sheet are dynamically reflected in the display of the score. A significant enlargement of the page-width parameter, for example, will allow for more measures on a single staff, and will result in a redraw of the complete score.
SCORE { margin-left : 30; margin-right : 30; margin-top : 80; margin-bottom : 20; page-height : 1000; page-width : 920; } TITLE { title-align : Center; title-font : -*-Times-Bold-R-Normal--*-240-*; } COMPOSER { composer-align : Center; composer-font : -*-Times-*-R-Normal--*-180-*; }
Figure 3: An associated style sheet
The playback facilities of our framework are centered around the MIDI server. After registering as a MIDI-client, the score editor is able to send the generated MIDI version of the score to the separate MIDI server. The MIDI server builds upon a socket-level client/server library and a class library that provides the basic functionality for MIDI devices, MIDI clients and the MIDI server. Note that the audio device is usually an exclusive resource, and by connecting to a single MIDI server, several client applications can have simultaneous access to a single MIDI output device. The functionality of the MIDI server comprises:
When a MIDI device is registered, a cookie is given out that may be used by a client to request the server to set up a virtual connection with that device. The cookie also prohibits unauthorized clients from accessing a MIDI output device.
- registering and unregistering MIDI devices,
- routing MIDI data between clients and MIDI devices, and
- administration and security checks.
We developed the keyboard applet as an alternative input device to be able to send ``live'' MIDI data to our server. Since multiple applications can have access to the MIDI-server, a user can have a score edit session running, and simultaneously be playing a keyboard applet.
To engage in a jam session, the keyboard applet connects to the JamServer instead of the MIDI server. The JamServer acts as the central point of a jam session, keeping track of all clients engaged in the session.
Figure 4: The jam server
To start a jam session, all jam clients connect to a single JamServer and send it their MIDI data. The JamServer is connected to one or more MIDI servers, as depicted in figure 4. By having the JamServer separate from the MIDI server itself, the latter is relieved from the burden of jam session management. Every connected MIDI device will receive all the MIDI data submitted by the jam clients. This data is relayed to these devices by the MIDI server(s), through the virtual MIDI data stream that is created when registering as a jam client.
In figure 4 we see three jam clients connected to a single JamServer (on machine B). The MIDI server is running on the same machine as the JamServer. Both the clients on machine A and C have registered a MIDI-out device (a software sound synthesis MIDI program developed for Solaris [6]) with the MIDI server on B. The user on A has additionally registered a MIDI-in device (the keyboard). Using the keyboard, the user on A can contribute to the jamming. The score editor on C is directly connected to the MIDI server and is not engaged in the jam session. The MIDI server will redirect MIDI request from the score editor only to the MIDI device on C.
To give an indication of the speed and response times of our system, we have used a special jam client, jamping, that measures the average delay between sending a MIDI message to the JamServer and receiving the same message on a connected MIDI device. For a 486DX2-66 PC with Linux with one client and both servers local, this resulted in a round-trip-delay time of 5.5 milliseconds. A similar setup on a Sparc-5 with Solaris resulted in 2.6 milliseconds. A similar configuration with the JamServer on a LAN gave 3.5 milliseconds average round-trip-delay time. Nevertheless, with a server in Amsterdam and a client in Sweden, we obtained an average round-trip-delay time of 87 milliseconds, with a peak of 1.6 seconds. Clearly, the length and variability of round-trip-delay times may be a prohibiting factor for jamming on a global scale.
The software described so far was developed for our SGML-based Web browser [2] as an extension to the hush class library [1]. The hush library contains the classes providing the interface to an embedded script interpreter and allows for a smooth interaction with the underlying window system. Other extensions of hush include
- widgets -- for creating graphical user interfaces
- sim -- for discrete event simulation
- video -- for digital video
- vr -- for OpenGL-based VRML support
- web -- for connecting to the Web
Figure 5: Overview of the Web components
Figure 5 shows an overview of the basic Web-related components of the hush library. The browser provides the top level user interface for all Web components, including a viewer, a scrollbar, navigation buttons (back, forward, home, reload) and an entry box to enter URLs. The netclient, web and MIMEviewer components form the conceptual base of our approach of connecting to the Web:
- viewer -- a widget for the inline display of several MIME types, such as HTML, VRML and Amuse score formats.
- web -- an extension of the MIMEviewer with a history of followed links and caching facility.
- netclient -- the interface to the World Wide Web, supporting several Internet protocols
The MIMEviewer component provides an abstract interface to viewers for several MIME types. The web widget only knows about the (abstract) MIMEviewer class while the actual functionality is implemented in several concrete viewer classes, one per MIME type. Specific viewers for new MIME types can be plugged dynamically into the MIMEviewer object.
When the MIMEviewer gets the instruction to display a document of a certain MIME type, it changes its role and becomes a viewer for that particular MIME type. This dynamic role-switching idiom is discussed in more detail in [2]. As a result, the addition of new viewers can be done without changing the web widget.
The netclient component builds the bridge between the local web widget and the World Wide Web by providing an abstract and uniform interface to network (file) access and transport protocols. In the realization of the netclient components we have employed the dynamic role-switching idiom in the same way as in the implementation of the MIMEviewer components.
The web object creates a MIMEviewer object and tells which role it should play (e.g. SGML, Amuse or VRMLviewer). This role can be changed during the lifetime of a single MIMEviewer object by calling a method to change its role. A browser typically uses only one single MIMEviewer object that changes its role according to the type of data that should be displayed. The SGMLviewer is the default viewer, it displays generic SGML documents by using style sheets for each document type. By default, a style sheet for HTML is used [11]. Since our generic SGMLviewer is more suited for textual documents and does not offer editing support, we developed a separate viewer/editor to process our Amuse/SGML score files.
Since the MIMEviewer provides no network functionality at all, it generates events whenever it needs to retrieve data pointed to by a URL. Such events are generated as a response to user interaction (e.g. clicking an anchor) or to fetch inline data during the parsing process. These events are typically handled by the web component which plays a central role in our approach because it combines the functionality of the MIMEviewer and the netclient components. Additionally, the web component adds a history and caching mechanism to the MIMEviewer. The web component's behavior is similar to the standard widgets of the hush framework, and can be conveniently used as a part of an application's GUI. Because the web widget has both a C++ class interface and a script interface, it is easy to create, or extend, applications with Web functionality.
Music can significantly enhance the perception of HTML pages, especially in a commercial or educational environment. Possible application areas which might benefit from the use of high-level music encodings and networked MIDI include:
For publishing music, networks, and in particular the Web with hyperlinking facilities, offer the opportunity to provide a rich information context, including references to audio representations, performances, background material and discographies. As stated before, high level encoding augmented with client-side playback facilities is of critical importance for delivering high quality musical material at adequate speed.
Collaborative facilities as described in [12] may be used to realize music education programs on the Web. For example, solfège and compositional exercises may be done in a virtual classroom, where instructor and pupils are connected via the network, as described in the previous sections.
Our current framework can be extended to support collaborative composition. As a demonstration for high school students, we have implemented a compositional game based on a dice game said to be invented by Mozart in the 18th century. Pupils were requested to submit one or more measures constructed as a variation on a limited number of patterns. Both the selection of measures and the choice of a variation may be done randomly.
At this stage, jamming on the Web is not a realistic option. First of all, on a global-scale network round-trip-delay times are too large and too variable for real interaction. Apart from technological issues, it is safe to say that real time musical collaboration is a relatively unexplored area. More research is needed, not only with respect to technological issues, but also in the area of human-computer interaction and computer-supported collaborative work.
The current version of the score editor and keyboard applet only works on our hush Web browser. We are currently developing a Netscape plug-in version of the score editor and experimenting with a Java version of the keyboard applet.
Because of the textual format of music description languages, it will be possible to employ anchoring and link facilities within musical documents as well. We plan to support both HTML as well as HyTime hyperlinks in future versions of our score editor.
We have described a framework offering a high-level description for the exchange of musical scores which can also be used for the generation of MIDI data. Furthermore, with our MIDI server architecture we can connect several musicians to share their music. Although both aspects of our system are in their beginning stages and need to be elaborated further, they indicate the new possibilities of music on the Web. In other words, it is time for the Web to become aware of music!
First of all we like to thank S.A. Megens (SAM) who developed the MIDI Jam server as part of his MSc. thesis project. Further we like to thank all those students who participated in one of the jamming sessions, devoting time to our project while they were supposed to do something useful.
[] - [up] [top] - OO hush Talks Papers DLP Courses Tutorials Lectures ?
- 1
- Anton Eliëns. Hush: A C++ API for Tcl/Tk. The X Resource, (14):111--155, April 1995.
- 2
- Anton Eliëns, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, and Bastiaan Schönhage. Animating the Web --- An SGML-based Approach. In Proceedings of the International Conference on 3D and Multimedia on the Internet, WWW and Networks, 17-18 April 1996, Bradford. British Computer Society, April 1996.
- 3
- International Organization for Standardization. Information Technology --- Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language (HyTime), 1992. International Standard ISO 10744:1992.
- 4
- International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission. Standard Music Description Language (SMDL), 1996. Draft International Standard ISO/IEC 10743.
- 5
- Håkon W. Lie and Bert Bos. Cascading Style Sheets, level 1, November 1996. W3C Proposed Recommendation; Available at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/.
- 6
- Sebastiaan A. Megens. More Music in Hush. Master's thesis, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, August 1996.
- 7
- Matthijs van Doorn and Anton Eliëns. Integrating WWW and Applications, November 1994. ERCIM/W4G --- International Workshop on WWW Design Issues, Amsterdam.
- 8
- Matthijs van Doorn and Anton Eliëns. Integrating Applications and the World Wide Web. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 27(6):1105--1110, April 1995. Special issue: Proceedings of the Third International World-Wide Web Conference --- Technology, Tools and Applications, April 10-14, Darmstadt, Germany.
- 9
- Jacco van Ossenbruggen and Anton Eliëns. Music in Time-based Hypermedia. In ECHT'94, The European Conference on Hypermedia Technology, pages 224--270, September 1994.
- 10
- Jacco van Ossenbruggen and Anton Eliëns. Bringing Music to the Web. In Proceedings of the Fourth International World Wide Web Conference --- The Web Revolution, pages 309--314. O'Reilly and Associates, Inc., December 1995.
- 11
- Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Anton Eliëns, and Bastiaan Schönhage. Web Applications and SGML. In David F. Brailsford and Richard K. Furuta, editors, Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Electronic Publishing, Document Manipulation and Typography, 24--26 September 1996, Palo Alto, USA,, volume 8(2 & 3) June and September 1995 of Electronic Publishing --- Origination, Dissemination and Design, pages 51--62, 1996. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
- 12
- Martijn van Welie and Anton Eliëns. Chatting on the Web, February 1996. ERCIM/W4G --- International Workshop on CSCW and the Web, Sankt Augustin, Germany, February 7-9, 1996.
Designing for young kids is something not a lot of designers think about until approached by a client who wants to target that age group.
But the truth is that kids in the 3-12 age group are using the Internet in surprising numbers. Ten years ago, it was rare for a child who hadn’t even yet reached school-age to use a computer. Now, there are a surprising number of websites specifically catering to them. And that number is growing all the time.
The Nielsen Norman Group, long known for their usability studies, has recently completed a study on the Internet habits and related usability issues often encountered by kids in the 3-12 age group.
The report is based on actual user studies, rather than just surveys asking kids what their internet habits and experiences are, and provide invaluable insight into the real usability issues confronting kids, and what users can do about it.
Below is just a brief sampling of some of the topics covered in the report and the study. The report can be purchased and downloaded from the NN/G website.
Myth: Kids Have Cutting-Edge Technology
A lot of us tend to believe that kids have access to cutting-edge technology. They have the newest computers, cell phones, and other gadgets at their disposal. While this may be more common among teenagers, younger kids often have outdated computers.
If you think about it for a minute, it makes sense. Kids in elementary school often aren’t as dependent on computers for schoolwork, and therefore parents often give them hand-me-downs (either their own or from an older sibling) or less expensive machines. This not only means that kids often have computers with slower processors, but may also be more limited in internet connection speeds.
Even the computers kids use at school are often older and outdated. School computers are often donated and budgets for new technology are often very limited. School computer labs may hang on to the same computers for five years or more due to budgetary restrictions. And often these computers aren’t particularly cutting-edge when they’re purchased.
Myth: Kids Understand the Technology They Use
A lot of adults look at kids using computers and assume they understand how they work. After all, a lot of these kids have grown up using computers and it seems like second-nature for many of them.
The truth is that just because kids know how to use something doesn’t mean they have any clue how it actually does what it does:
Like most adults who don’t understand how a refrigerator works, kids do not feel they need to understand the underlying mechanisms of the Web before using it.
Because of this, it’s important that designers don’t overestimate the knowledge of their visitors. It becomes more important as a user’s age decreases, as they have less experience in how technology generally works.
Myth: Kids are More Web Savvy Than Adults
Because kids often spend so much time using technology, people often assume they’re much more savvy online than adults. But the truth is, they have just as many problems with usability as adults do.
Don’t think that you can skip certain principles of good usability with the idea that kids will just figure it out. Kids don’t have any special powers that allow them to circumvent usability problems. And in fact, when talking about the youngest web users, they’re often much less savvy with the Internet than their parents. They have no experience online to draw from, and therefore are constantly learning new things.
The youngest users do not know where to click and what to do on a website. There are no rules because the users are not aware of them. Many of the inexperienced users do not know how to read. How do you tell children what they are supposed to do when they cannot read instructions?
That last part presents a particular challenge to designers. Visual cues are particularly important for sites with younger user groups. Even on sites where the target audience can likely read, remember that reading comprehension is still a huge variable among young children and keep your instructions simple and straight-forward.
Kids Have Little Patience Online
We all have a tendency to stop using sites that frustrate us because of poor usability or other issues. Kids and teens do so even faster than adults. If they have issues using a site, they’ll leave almost immediately, where adults might click around and try to figure it out.
Kids also get fed up with loading times for things like videos. This can be compounded by the fact that these kids often have older and less powerful computers than their older siblings or parents. Designers should be very wary of longer load times, or at least make it clear how long kids can expect to wait (ex, using a progress bar rather than just a “loading” text or animation).
We saw several kinds of reactions while users were waiting for Flash files to download, but they all showed their dissatisfaction with the website when they had to wait. The longer the users had to wait, the worse their reactions got. Many just clicked the Back button.
Kids Are Online to Be Entertained
Adults often go online for information. They check out news sites, visit portals, and use search engines. Kids, on the other hand, mostly go online for entertainment (and homework). They play games, check out sites about their favorite characters or celebrities, and otherwise have fun online.
If the site you’re designing isn’t strictly an entertainment site, adding entertaining elements like games or other interactive content can greatly improve the site’s engagement among younger visitors.
Because many kids look for entertainment on the Web, multimedia elements are very attractive when they serve content in a richer and more amusing way.
Take Into Account Poorer Motor Skills
Designers often forget about the physical differences between children and adults when designing a site. Kids are less dexterous than adults, and therefore have a harder time typing and manipulating a mouse. This means they tend to make more mistakes than adults.
Kids also had trouble using the mouse and they often clicked on the right button by mistake, and many didn’t know how to drag. They…often missed the target and clicked a different item close by, by mistake.
Designers should take care to make links and clickable areas large and well-defined, with buffer space between them to help minimize the number of mistaken clicks kids make while using their sites.
Kids Are More Likely to Experiment Online
Adults often have very strict preconceived notions about how things should work online. They’re used to sites they visit behaving in a certain way, and expect similar sites to act in similar ways.
Kids, because of their limited experience online, don’t have all those same preconceived notions about the way things are supposed to be. Because of this, they’re much more willing to experiment with different elements of a website. Kids will even sometimes engage in a “minesweeping” method of exploring a website, where they basically just click randomly hoping for a response.
Because of this, designers need to be careful to remove unnecessary and extraneous links from their pages (or move them to places where kids are less likely to click, like below the footer) so kids don’t accidentally click on content that’s unlikely to engage them (like an about page or information intended for parents rather than kids).
If a kid gets lost on your site, they’ll often leave rather than knowing to use the back button to get back to where they wanted to be.
Kids Don’t Differentiate Between Content and Advertising
Adults often have “banner blindness” and ignore promotional or advertising content on websites they visit.
Kids, partly because of their limited web experience, make little distinction between advertising and promotional parts of a website and the site’s actual content.
This is both good and bad. It’s great for advertisers, who can often lure kids away from sites they’ve intentionally visited much more easily than they can adults. For site owners, it can be detrimental, as kids often leave a site without even realizing they’ve left.
So What Does That All Mean?
If you’re designing a website for young children, it’s important to note the differences between the way kids use the Internet and the way teens and adults do. Kids are much less forgiving in a lot of ways than adults, and will more quickly abandon a site that doesn’t meet their needs and expectations.
If you’re a designer who takes on projects aimed at kids on a regular (or even occasional) basis, it’s worth checking out the full-length study from Nielsen Norman Group.
Understanding how kids actually use the internet (rather than how they say they use it, which often varies widely from the truth) will greatly improve your ability to create websites that are engaging for this often-overlooked group of Internet users.
For more information, you can purchase and download the full report from the NN/G website.
Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, September 13, 2010
Children's Websites: Usability Issues in Designing for KidsSummary:
New research with users aged 3–12 shows that older kids have gained substantial Web proficiency since our last studies, while younger kids still face many problems. Designing for children requires distinct usability approaches, including targeting content narrowly for different ages of kids.Millions of children use the Internet, and millions more are coming online each year. Many websites specifically target children with educational or entertainment content, and mainstream websites often have specific "kids' corner" sections — either as a public service or to build brand loyalty from an early age.
Despite this growth in users and services, little is known about how children actually use websites or how to design sites that will be easy for them to use. Website design for kids is typically based purely on folklore about how kids supposedly behave — or, at best, on insights gleaned when designers observe their own children, who hardly represent average kids, typical Internet skills, or common knowledge about the Web.
To separate design myths from usability facts, we turn to empirical user research: observations of a broad range of children as they use a wide variety of websites.
This research covers users aged 3–12 years. (Guidelines for sites targeting 13- to 17-year-olds are available in a report from our separate research with teenagers.)
User Studies
We conducted two separate rounds of usability studies, testing a total of 90 children (41 girls and 49 boys):In Study 1, we conducted sessions in participants' homes, at schools, and in a usability lab. All of Study 2 sessions were run in a lab. We tested some users in friendship pairs, and other individually. Pair sessions worked best for 6- to 8-year-old users. In contrast, for children younger than 6 or older than 8, individual sessions were just as good (and are obviously cheaper, as we had to recruit only one user per session).
- Study 1 (9 years ago). In this study, we tested 27 sites with 55 children, aged 6–11. We conducted about a third of the study in Israel, and the rest in the United States.
- Study 2 (new research). In this study, we tested 29 sites with 35 children, aged 3–12 years. All of these user sessions were in the U.S.
Although it can be difficult for shy or very young kids, we encouraged users to think out loud while they were using the sites. We told the children that they were the experts, and that we wanted them to teach us how kids use and think about websites. We then explained that, in order for us to learn, they had to explain what they were thinking at all times.
We mainly took the users to specific sites and gave them directed tasks that we'd prepared for each site. Often, these tasks differed according to the user's age and gender. For example, on lego.com, we asked girls in the 6- to 8-year-old range to find a horseback riding game, and asked 9- to 12-year-old boys to find information about the multiplayer game Lego Universe. At other times, we gave all users the same task. For example, on jitterbug.tv, we asked users to watch a video of the song, "The Wheels on the Bus." Finally, some sites were tested only by a targeted age group or gender. On crayola.com, for example, we tested only 3- to 5-year-old users, and asked them to draw and print a portrait of their best friend.
We mainly tested websites targeted at children, as well as the special "kids' corner" sections, where many mainstream websites offer content for kids. In Study 1, we also tested a few general websites targeted at grownup users to assess how kids use such sites. And, in Study 2, we tested some Web-wide tasks, asking users a general question and letting them find the answer on a site of their choosing. For example, we asked children aged 6–12 to find out how to say "thank you" in Japanese.
We tested 53 websites, covering a broad range of genres:
- Games (e.g., Herman's Homepage, PoissonRouge.com)
- Media sites (e.g., Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, PBS)
- Educational (e.g., Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, Funbrain.com, Girl Scouts, National Geographic)
- Toys and other children's products (e.g., Barbie, Fisher-Price, the Harry Potter books, Hasbro, Lego)
- Other commercial sites (e.g., Belmont Bank, National Football League)
- Government (e.g., Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Library of Congress, United States Mint)
Changes over Time
We conducted our two studies 9 years apart. Most aspects of usability don't change much in 9 years; when we test the same design questions repeatedly, we usually end up with the same findings. For example, guidelines on the best way to structure a menu or how many items a menu should include are typically the same year after year, because such user interface questions are determined more by the human brain's characteristics and limitations than by changing technologies. (Other design issues are more technologically determined. For example, people's approach to video on websites has changed substantially over the last decade.)In addition to the static state of human psychology, usability findings tend to be stable because the user pool is stable. If we take a simplified view of the adult audience — say, anyone from 20 to 80 years of age — then 83% of users will be unchanged from one decade to the next. (In reality, most websites don't have an even age distribution among their customers, but the point remains: adult users in 10 years will be generally the same people who are using the Web today.)
Children are a different story, and there are at least two reasons to expect that current usability findings might be different from those of 9 years ago:
Taken together, these two observations imply major changes in what constitutes a usable site for kids today compared to 9 years ago.
- There has been 100% turnover among the individuals in our 3- to 12-year-old range. Our youngest users from 9 years ago (when we tested kids aged 6–11) will be 15 years old now, and thus no longer within our research's target audience. We're dealing with a completely new generation of kids.
- Over the past decade, the amount of time children spend on a computer has tripled, according to Kaiser Family Foundation research. And, according to both our research and that of others, the best predictor of how children use websites is how much online practice they have.
Despite this reasonable case for expecting major changes, our second study actually confirmed most of the first study's guidelines. We did learn many new things, however, and the number of design guidelines increased from 70 to 130 — partly because we tested newer sites that do newer things, and partly because we extended the age group to include very young children (aged 3–5).
In one example, we observed literally the same usability problem again 9 years later: the Web pages for the Sesame Street TV series use a navigation bar with characters from the show. Unfortunately, in the UI, these icons serve a dual purpose as both navigation icons and features of a mini-game: as users mouse over them, the characters act as xylophone keys that play musical notes. Both 9 years ago and today, the xylophone feature distracted children from the navigation. And, as kids played tunes, they were disoriented by accidental clicking.
Although many usability guidelines are the same as 9 years ago, we did find one major change since the first study: children today are much more experienced in using computers and the Internet. As a result, they're not as subject to many of the prevalent, beginning-user problems we found in our first study. These days, kids are on computers almost as soon as they can sit up and move a mouse or tap a screen. It's now common for a 7-year-old kid to be a seasoned Internet user with several years' experience.
Such early exposure to computers was the reason we extended the age range covered by our research to include children aged 3–5.
The biggest change since Study 1 is that many of the behaviors we previously saw in the mid-range age group (6–8 years) are now more characteristic for the youngest users (3–5). In contrast, users who are 7 or older often exhibit fairly advanced behaviors. For example, now only the youngest kids have problems with scrolling. Children 9 years and older are more likely to scroll, and in fact do better with articles that are presented on one scrolling page rather than split into many small pages. (The ability to use scrolling Web pages is something we've seen in adult users since 1997, though people still look more at content on the top part of the page than at information lower down.)
Another change relates to reading. In the first study, many children were willing to read instructions before, say, starting a game. Now many kids behave more like adult users and refuse to read. This reduced willingness to read seems related to experience: the more experience our users had, the less they read.
Children vs. Adult Users
The two big conclusions regarding Web usability for children are:The following table summarizes some of the main similarities and differences we've observed in user behavior between children (in this study) and adults (across many other studies).
- Kids and adults are different, and kids need a design style that follows different usability guidelines.
- That said, many of the things that make sites easier for adults also make them easier for kids. Don't discard what you already know about usable design and how to simplify sites. In particular, comply with Web-wide UI conventions and employ a consistent design within your site.
Children Adults Goal in visiting websites Entertainment Getting things done
Communication/communityFirst reactions Quick to judge site
(and to leave if no good)Quick to judge site
(and to leave if no good)Willingness to wait Want instant gratification Limited patience Following UI conventions Preferred Preferred User control Preferred Preferred Exploratory behavior Like to try many options
Mine-sweeping the screenStick to main path Multiple/redundant navigation Very confusing Slightly confusing Back button Not used (young kids)
Relied on (older kids)Relied on Reading Not at all (youngest kids)
Tentative (young kids)
Scanning (older kids)Scanning Readability level Each user's grade level 8th to 10th grade text for broad consumer audiences Real-life metaphors
e.g., spatial navigationVery helpful for pre-readers Often distracting or too clunky for online UI Font size 14 point (young kids)
12 point (older kids)10 point
(up to 14 point for seniors)Physical limitations Slow typists
Poor mouse controlNone (unless disabled) Scrolling Avoid (young kids)
Some (older kids)Some Animation and sound Liked Usually disliked Advertising and promotions Can't distinguish from real content Ads avoided (banner blindness);
promos viewed skepticallyDisclosing private info Usually aware of issues: hesitant to enter info Often recklessly willing to give out personal info Age-targeted design Crucial, with very fine-grained distinctions between age groups Unimportant for most sites (except to accommodate seniors) Search Bigger reliance on bookmarks than search, but older kids do search Main entry point to the Web Many of the basic rules for usable Web design are the same for children and adults, though often with differences in degree.
For example, we've had a long-standing guideline to avoid redundant navigation schemes for adult users. People get annoyed when they have to look for navigation in several different places. And it's confusing when pages have multiple links to the same destination, because users don't know whether the various links actually point to the same place or have slightly different meanings. This often forces adult users to waste time clicking on the "same" link several times, causing navigational disorientation.
Our seminar on website navigation design covers 25 different navigation techniques, with guidelines for when to use them. They all have their place. But the one guideline to rule them all is to avoid stuffing too many navigation schemes into a single design.
Although too much navigation is annoying and confusing for adults, it can be devastating for children.
Kids suffer from a learned path bias: they tend to reuse the same method they've used before to initiate an action. In our studies, we often saw kids who had been successful with a certain approach to a site stick determinedly to that approach over and over again, even as it failed them during subsequent tasks that required them to use a different navigation scheme.
Age-Appropriate Design
The biggest finding in both the new and old research is the need to target very narrow age groups when designing for children. Indeed, there's no such thing as "designing for children," defined as everybody aged 3–12. At a minimum, you must distinguish between young (3–5), mid-range (6–8), and older (9–12) children. Each group has different behaviors, and the users get substantially more web-savvy as they get older. And, those different needs range far beyond the obvious imperative to design differently for pre-readers, beginning readers, and moderately skilled readers.We found that young users reacted negatively to content designed for kids that were even one school grade below or above their own level. Children are acutely aware of age differences: at one website, a 6-year-old said, "This website is for babies, maybe 4 or 5 years old. You can tell because of the cartoons and trains." (Although you might view both 5- and 6-year olds as "little kids," in the mind of a 6-year-old, the difference between them is vast.)
Finally, it's important to retain a consistent user experience rather than bounce users among pages targeting different age groups. In particular, by understanding what attracts children's attention, you can "bury" the links to service content for parents in places that kids are unlikely to click. Text-only footers worked well for this purpose.
Advice for Parents and Educators
We conducted this research in order to generate usability guidelines for companies, government agencies, and major non-profit organizations that want to design websites for children. Even so, some of our findings have personal implications for parents, teachers, and others who want to help individual children succeed on the Internet:
- The main predictor of children's ability to use websites is their amount of prior experience. We also found that kids as young as 3 can use websites, as long as they're designed according to the guidelines for this very young audience. Together, these two findings lead to the advice to start your children on the Internet at an early age (while also setting limits; too much computer time isn't good for kids).
- Campaigns to sensitize children to the Internet's potential dangers and to teach them to be wary of submitting personal information are meeting with success. Keep up this good work.
- On a more negative note, kids still don't understand the Web's commercial nature and lack the skills needed to identify advertising and treat it differently than real content. We need much stronger efforts to teach children about these facts of new media.
Learn More
Our 275-page report with 130 design guidelines for designing websites for children is available for download.
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Welcome to 'designing for children' - an event being held from 2nd to 6th of February 2010 at the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay).
This is an invitation to be a part of a series of events concerned with designing for children with focus on 'play' and 'learn':
The major events during the week are:
1. Design Education Meet (2, February 2010)
2. International Design Conference (3-5, February 2010)
3. Exhibition of projects on ‘Design for Children’ (2-6, February 2010)
Updated Schedule of events: click here (pdf document)
List of speakers/presentations: click here
Organisers:
IDC, IIT Bombay
DesigninIndia.net
InDeAsSupporting Partners:
CumulusColorsofindiaComet Media Foundation
Toy Theater - Composer - Have you ever wanted to compose your own music? Use the composer to create your own melodies.
Looplabs is a free online music mixing software tool that has been used by millions of worldwide visitors. Created by CRASHMEDIA.com
Singsnap is a free online karaoke community where you can sing and record from a large variety of karaoke songs and comment on other karaoke enthusiast's performances. To take full advantage, all you need is an inexpensive web cam and microphone.
The idea of cocompose.com The philosophy and idea of cocompose.com is, that songs can be developed and enhanced in an evolutionary process by giving anybody the possibility to join or create an open music project and that way bring in his individual talent to this process. At cocompose.com you will have the possibility to find creative talents from all over the world and making music as part of an virtual online band by participating on an open music project. The ambition of cocompose.com is, that hobby musicians and professionals can come together to exchange their ideas, talents and skills, as we are confident that good ideas and the feeling for great sound is not reserved to anybody.
Due to the possibility to assemble single tracks there may resulting different song or multimedia-composing versions from one and the same music project, which then are in competition with each other. It is the auditory (to which you are belonging too, of course) that decides through its "voting" and its downloads, which song or multimedia-composing is the better one.
The better a song is, the more he rises in the ranking. Because songs can be enhanced and recreated at all times they don´t have to be perfect from the very beginning. Why all that? There great talents among us, which prefer to make music alone and have all capabilities to do that - having a groovy melody in their mind, having the right feeling to write nice lyrics, are great singers with the perfect voice and on top know playing several instruments perfectly.
But the majority among us is more specialized and enjoys to make music together with others and does not like to develop a song alone.Imagine... maybe there is a cool melody in your mind, but you don´t have the right voice or your instrument knowledge is not good enough to develop the melody to a perfect song. Or you developed a song quite far, but you know something is missing and you can´t find out what it is. Or you perfectly know playing your instrument, but composing a song or writing lyrics does not belong to your strengths. Or you just like making music online together with other in an musicians community. Or, or, or...
How does it work? It´s simple! Each signed up "Creative User" can create open or private music projects or can participate on existing project of others. A music project first and foremost consists of audio tracks uploaded by different musicians which can be freely assembled to a published song. You can say cocompose.com is somehow working like a multi band machine, where you can turn on or off single tracks and play the turned on tracks simultaneously. Everybody can try out track combinations and play them. So you don´t have to sign up to do that.
Wouldn´t it be great, if there was a musician- and songwriter community, which makes all this possible?
You found that community! Right here at cocompose.com.Once you signed up as a "Creative User" you can add a video to a music project as well. Together with the audio tracks it becomes a music video from it. Don´t worry about the sound of your video as the sound is removed by the system after its upload for not disturbing the audio tracks of a music project. You can also add lyrics to a music project, even if they are not finished yet. Maybe another one has a good idea how to complete or enhance it and maybe other users can help solving language problems as cocompose.com is an international musicians- and songwriters community.
No matter, if your music project a music video is assigned or not - you can make your lyrics to captions using our online captions tool, with no programming knowledge needed. The captions are displayed in our online player and can also be downloaded as a video file, which is playable on several multimedia players like iTunes or Real-Player.
This way your lyrics get more attention by the auditory, are imprinting better in peoples mind, and can be understood more easy by the international auditory. Furthermore they can be sung by others e.g. as karaoke or to participate on your music project. As far as we know this is a feature you find only here at cocompose.com!
Each song should have a cover image, of course. Self-evidently you can add this too.The system of cocompose.com can not only play the tracks and media of a music project contemporaneously. Assembled audio- / video- and captions tracks are merged and converted by the system to downloadable song- and video files and can be normally played on your computer (e.g. iTunes, Real-Player, QuickTime-Player, etc.) and mp3/mp4-devices (e.g. iPod, mobiles, mp3-players, etc.) (only exception: captions do not show up on iPod and mobile phone and similar devices).
Dec 16 2010 While the object of both vigorous praise and criticism, music games have helped people see music and musical interfaces in new ways. Masaya Matsuura (PaRappa the Rapper) is known as the father of that genre. With a new title, you can try out his latest music gaming concept for free, on iPod touch and iPhone. The game is the product of a collaboration with Dutch developer Triangle Studios (makers of the iPhone port of augmented reality browser Layar). And it’s all for a good cause: the OneBigGame effort is using proceeds from track sales for this title and other gaming revenues to support Save the Children and Starlight Children’s Foundation. More than any other designer, Matsuura has thought of plenty of novel ideas for how to vary the music game model. At its simplest, of course, music games owe some of their legacy to titles like the toy Simon: copy a sequence of events in time. With WINtA, the gameplay has been varied again. Here, the digital vocals become the object of the player’s input. There are also clever visuals unique to each music track, making the game as much music visualization and interactive toy as game. The creators say the new approach will present a “new way of involving players in music and lyrics,” partly because the lyrics and vocals become an active part of the title. The free track comes from Matsuura himself; other titles are in-app purchases. (Free tracks will be released weekly, too, according to the publishers.) Also, I don’t doubt that in these simple, geometric graphics, there might be for someone out there the seed for a musical interface that isn’t a toy. Part of what fascinates me about Matsuura’s work – aside from the fact that he inspired game house Harmonix – is that it is so very different from conventional musical interface work. It does need to function more simply, as a toy, and with clear states of success and failure (arguably not the case in traditional music performance). This should be, at the very least, worth a quick play-through. And you get a taste of Matsuura’s whimsical musical style, as well. WINtA on the iTunes App Store http://wintagame.comhttp://support.ngmoco.com/http://onebiggame.com
Use the interactive tools in SoundJunction to create music yourself.
The links on this page guide you through the creative process and give ideas for some of the sounds you could create.
Or visit the Composer forum to listen to the music other users have created on SoundJunction.
The online music factory - Jam, remix, arrange chords and loops - Free online band, free online mixer, desktop arranger, music arranger, music arrangement, music creator, online producing, band arrangement, garage band composer, sony acid...
Making music fun for kids! Create your own songs and share them with your friends today.
I am a British artist and designer. I use technology to make the unimaginable come to life. Inventing new approaches that explore play, human behavior and engagement through interaction design and the visual arts.
Ten minutes. Four or five kids (or adults). Make a song. Go.
That’s the idea behind the Youth Music Box, developed by Silent Studios and Chris O’Shea. (Our friend Chris you may recall from various interactive projects and the blog pixelsumo; he sends this project our way.) The software is build in openFrameworks, the C++-based creative coding environment for artists.
With keys, drums, and yes, even a scratching DJ-style interface, the music box brings together kids for quick music making, inspired by the phenomenon of musical games. The experience is guided by genre, with some effort to make sure whatever they do sounds good, but it’s extraordinary how effective it is at conveying the experience of the successful jam. It’s a bit of a confidence builder, in other words, for a group musical experience, perhaps more so than those ear-splitting, cheap plastic recorder consorts I recall from my youth.
And oh yeah, those kids look super cute once they get rocking out. (See video below.)
Youth Music Box Experience from Silent Studios | Resonate on Vimeo.
All of this raises some fascinating questions, and not always with the answers you might expect. In a normal musical ensemble, you begin sounding like crap, amp up difficulty, and eventually sound something like this – at least as far as coherence goes, assuming you’re not aiming for experimental free jazz. But with the addition of technology, whether musical games or the presets on our favorite synths or the quantization and beat-synced loops of our sequencers, it goes something in reverse. You start out sounding like this, pull apart the mechanisms that make you sound a certain way, and eventually find your way to your own personal approach. (And at some point, you get some of the readers on this site, writing code to produce their own sounds and musical structures line by line.) In fact, one could imagine scaling difficulty of even this particular setup, gradually adding greater musical freedom and taking away the “training wheels” of all the rules-based restrictions that make the results sound a particular way.
Skeptical about the connection of music-based games and actual music making? Think again – even as music education unravels worldwide, games are actually encouraging real music. That revelation was the impetus of the music box project:
Research commissioned by Youth Music found that up to 2.5 million young people in the UK – or 1 million aged between 12 and 18 – have been inspired to progress into ‘real’ music-making because they have played music-based console games.
You got it – they hit those plastic buttons, got inspired, got bored, then decided to go to the real thing. And otherwise, they might have remained passive musical consumers: the game was a gateway drug. Of course, that means that any such interactive experience has to stand up to polished Guitar Hero and Rock Band-style games. But anyone who believes the music games genre has peaked and is on its way out may be dead wrong on many, many levels. On the contrary, this may only be getting started – and the real growth could come in music beyond the realm of games, as people graduate to the unlimited set of possible music experiences.
Chris sends lots more documentation of this project, if you’d like to learn more:
by silent studios and me for uk charity youth music to get kids turned on to music
http://www.vimeo.com/6210259watch some bbc coverage here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8160000/newsid_8168800/8168881.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8154449.stmEd.: The video at top doesn’t play outside the UK, because we don’t pay BBC license fees. What, all those Doctor Who videos I bought in the 80s and 90s didn’t make up for it?
here is a press release from roland. the box is ‘powered by roland’
http://www.audioprointernational.com/news/1329/Roland-unveils-Music-Box-for-Youth-Musicsome launch pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsumo/sets/72157621466657993/making of pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsumo/sets/72157621404410234/this goes into some of the ideas and details about the musical kit
http://musicispower.youthmusic.org.uk/blog/24/youthmusicboxlaunchesatlondonssouthbankcentre/on the website there is a very simplified flash version you can try out on a mini timeline, just click play online
its quite funny to read these comments on it
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/07/youth-music-box-democratizes-music-creation.htmlAnd yes, you can try this yourself and play online! The official site:
http://musicispower.youthmusic.org.uk/youth_music_box/
The production company:
http://www.silentstudios.co.uk/
And Chris’ own site:
Roland is involved, and donated an E-09 Interactive Music Arranger to give kids some toys to explore.
And yes, I did notice a certain kindred spirit in the form of Moldover’s Octamasher. The underlying technology and its results are different, but to me what’s most interesting isn’t the superficial similarity of these projects, but the fact that they array the instruments in a circle. Computer production often simply orients a single person to a screen – not so ideal for collaboration. And even Rock Band and Guitar Hero, like an onstage band, line up artists for a (now nonexitent) audience. Perhaps the circle is about to make a comeback as music restores its social aspect.
Curious to hear other thoughts on these projects as they evolve.
Complete Features and Benefits
FlexiMusic Kids Composer is an amazing piece of software, and is the easiest way to make instant music. Using a paintbrush, an erase tool, and a mouse, it’s fun and easy to make songs come alive. Just Select a “Tune”, paint on the screen, and, before long, you’ll have a complete song. It’s that easy. All you need is the FlexiMusic Kids Composer, your PC, and a little imagination.
Mix and match Tunes any way you can to build complete, original songs. Even if you don’t know anything about music, FlexiMusic Kids Composer software can help you sound like a star.
Lots of instruments: Hundreds of musical instruments. Create music with quality sounds and instruments, including drums, keyboards, sound effects, guitars, horns, percussion and more…
Big, Simple Buttons: FlexiMusic Kids Composer software is perfect for small children. Its colorful interface, basic tools, and big, simple buttons are easy for kids to understand and use.
Working with Songs: After completing the songs, you can make fine adjustments using Tempo. FlexiMusic Kids Composer uses Tempo to control changes in how fast a song plays. Moving this control to the left will play a song slower, while moving it to the right will play it faster.
Audio Recording: Record your live vocals, or sing and play along with the music. It has built-in, small audio editor to delete unwanted silent parts, and to increase the volume of an audio file.
Email Songs to Friends and Family: In no time, your kids will be making music that will amaze others. So, why not share it with others? With the touch of a button, you can send an e-mail to anyone in the world, and share their musical creations with friends and family!
FlexiMusic Kids Composer is best suited for children who would like to practice mixing a variety of instruments, and composing their own music.
Supported File Formats
FlexiMusic Kids Composer software saves to these formats:
- FmSng: FlexiMusic Kids Composer File (*.FmSng)
- WAV: The output song can be saved as standard WAV files (*.WAV)
- WMA: The output song can be saved as a WMA file (*.WMA)
Hyperscore uses an original presentational style to teach the essentials of music composition.
Kids online music games
Kids cow piano
You can download this game it to your computer. Music games for kids.
Choosing a First Instrument - where to start?
By Jim McCutcheon
The piano is not the only choice for a beginning instrument. Over the past few decades, advancements in pedagogy (the methodology of teaching something) have resulted in much success with children beginning to play music on string instruments, such as guitars, violins and cellos. These instruments are available in fractional sizes that will fit very young children, and those children have access to increasing numbers of professional teachers dedicated to teaching them.
It is very instructive for both parents and children to take advantage of opportunities where children can try out instruments themselves. Ideally, families can attend special programs where their children can try out a variety of instruments under the guidance of specialists who teach those instruments. Often, a child whose heart has been set on learning a particular instrument plays it, finds it difficult to produce a note and decides to try something else.
Finally, it is important to understand that it is most important that children learn about music in a way that is positive and that they receive support and encouragement for their efforts. Many children change instruments as they grow up, but even then, all is not lost - playing one instrument always makes the next one easier to learn.
A cool site for kids from the American Symphony Orchestra League. Learn all about classical music and the different instruments that. Categories cover music, storytelling, individual songs, DVD/Video, Best New Artist, and by kids for kids. Age ranges of various categories cover from infant. Find out how one group of kids made their own radio show. Make up songs on the Kids Rock Sing along with the winners of the Childrens Music Web Awards. Sing-Along Songs (Midis and Lyrics) presented by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences as a means of introducing kids to science and.
Creatingmusic. com is a childrens online creative music environment for children of all ages. Its a place for kids to compose music, play with musical. Hey Kids! Want to learn more about music and the people who make it? Come see all the fun things you can explore on our website! Have fun with music!. Parents seem to intuitively know thisand for this reason youll find them encouraging their kids to learn musicnot only through teaching them.
Music for kids and children games
Don't worry, we won't post anything.
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