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

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

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

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

What You Will Learn

• Incorporate play and best practice to a research project with kids as (or among) the participants
• Approach, scope, prepare, execute, and report research projects
• Choose the method and approach that is best suited for the needs of your project and stakeholders

Who This Book Is For

Designers, producers, marketers, or researchers with kids as the audience, or students.

About the Author

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

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

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