Children's preferences in design of multimedia application

Many companies have tried designing educational multimedia for children because they believe that multimedia has enormous potential. Despite having very good design features there are some that children like and some they do not. This paper is about children using multimedia. It is an account of children's preferences and was used as a scoping study to the development of a model on how to make multimedia successful. This research uses a grounded theory discovery led by children method. Twelve children aged 9-10, from a primary school in Lough borough, United Kingdom, were chosen to take part in this study over a period of three days using different sets of materials. Books were also included besides publicly available multimedia CDs to help children in articulating their preferences. The study was done in a natural settings slightly structured in nature. Findings from this study have revealed that not all multimedia designed for them is appealing to children and the criteria of success fullness is about engagement and being engaged. Unsuccessful design need an external motivation e.g. as instructed by teacher, parents, etc. for children to continue interacting with it. The preferences tended to be the driving force that influenced the children's behavior with the multimedia applications given to them. Some children tended to be engrossed by some features and distracted by others. Basically a multimedia has to be interactive to engage children. Children must be able to do something with it to make them engaged by it. Therefore it could be concluded that passive design, like just looking at the information on a screen, bores children.

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