Exploring the search functionalities on a website designed for children

Sammanfattning: The usage of Internet has increased among children. Much of that use comes from watching videos and playing games. There are a few services that cater to this need and Barnkanalen is one of them. However, in order for the service to be usable to children it needs to be adapted for them and content needs to be easily available. Children with no or little reading ability and writing skills need extra attention since they simply can not type correctly what they are searching for into a search field. This paper explores children’s preferred search strategies and what problems they experience on one of the major websites designed for children by conducting a user study. The user study was based upon a usability evaluation method called Constructive Interaction, where the children collaborated in pairs to solve search related tasks given to them. It was conducted at an after-school center in Bromma, Stockholm. 19 children aged 6-8 participated. The results indicate that the computer user interface and search functionalities of Barnkanalen need some improvements. The children with more developed spelling skills often have no problems, finding what they are supposed to find, when they know the title of the show. When the children did not have the knowledge of the titles or could not spell them they experienced some difficulties in finding what they were looking for. Most would browse the page, scrolling through the content being presented in horizontal lists. Some children got stuck in repetitive search loops; some were not paying enough attention and missed what they were looking for when it showed up on the screen. The children also had a hard time clicking on what they wanted to click at. Only four children had prior experience of visiting Barnkanalen on a computer but almost all of the children had experience using Barnkanalen on tablets or smartphones. The results led to recommendations on how to improve the site. For example, show titles in English should be allowed to be spelled phonetically, certain buttons need to be bigger, making Barnplay the start page of Barnkanalen and a virtual assistant is proposed.