Children’s Control/Display Stereotypes

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine control/display stereotypes for children of a range of ages and development of these stereotypes with age. Background: Little is known about control/display stereotypes for children of different ages and the way in which these stereotypes develop with age. This study is part of a program to determine the need to design differentially for these age groups. Method: We tested four groups of children with various tasks (age groups 5 to 7, 8 to 10, 11 to 13, 14 to 16), with about 30 in each group. Examples of common tasks were opening a bottle, turning on taps, and allocating numbers to keypads. More complex tasks involved rotating a control to move a display in a requested direction. Results: Tasks with which different age groups were familiar showed no effect of age group. Different control/display arrangements generally showed an increase in stereotype strength with age, with dependence on the form of the control/display arrangement. Two-dimensional arrangements, with the control on the same plane as the display, had higher stereotype strength than three-dimensional arrangements for all age groups, suggesting an effect of familiarity with controls and displays with increasing age. Conclusion: Children’s control/display stereotypes do not differ greatly from those of adults, and hence, design for children older than 5 years of age, for control/display stereotypes, can be the same as that for adult populations. Application: When designing devices for children, the relationship between controls and displays can be as for adult populations, for which there are considerable experimental data.