three year old usability

I took my almost-three year old to the public library tonite. He wanted to play with the computers and chose to play a Magic School Bus game. The game was designed with older kids in mind so he did not fully understand what he was doing.

At one point he became frustrated during the process of designing a character and asked me, "dad, where is the back button". I explained to him that there wasn’t one… he said "oh ok" with a sad look in his eye and kept playing.

A lot of can be learned from that simple story:

• the back button is an easy to grasp concept
• the ability to undo or back-up should be pervasive
• children can learn how to use computers at a very young age
• don’t use frames without paying attention to details
• the little things matter
• in certain situations content trumps usability