Annotated Bibliography of Children Websites

Arandilla, Rachel. “Key Points to Remember when Designing Child-Oriented Websites”.

2011. 1st Web Designer. Web

Rachel Arandilla explains key points in tailoring websites for children. Arandilla recommends the use of colors that are “lively, bright, and cheerful”(p.2). Points will come across better with pictures than text. Use text only when needed, and use basic vocabulary. Also, one of the biggest draws for kids is games and activities. Yet, keep in mind the gender, and age range, of the targeted group when creating these activities. In general, kids seem to have a low attention span, so creative pre-loaders and visible navigation bars are essential (Rachel Arandilla, p.1-18). “Designing for a children’s website is tremendously harder to develop and design, but more rewarding and fun. Designers learn to design and layout according to their audience’s behaviors, preferences and web experience”(Rachel Arandilla, p.17). Designing for children can be difficult due to their unique wants, needs, limitations, and abilities. However, in creating successful websites for children it can greatly help them learn and develop. For instance, a child may learn math with games on a child friendly website. Yet, they will not be able to learn from these games if they cannot understand how to get the game to start.

This article answers my question: How to tailor websites to youth? Arandilla gives specific key points to address when tailoring a website for adolescents. Such elements include: bright colors, limiting text, use of games and activities, knowing your target age group, tailoring to their low attention span, ease of navigation, and using animated characters. This article is fantastic from a marketing standpoint. Arandilla clearl...

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...ecting a wide range of design styles and contents” (Denise Agosto, p.258). This is important to keep in mind when creating a website. Cites need to be able to appeal to a large range of groups and personalities. When this is done websites will have the most success.

This report by Agosto answers my question: How to tailor websites to youth? This article looks at how to tailor to adolescent girls specifically. It provides useful information such discussing primary preferences and secondary preferences, design vs. content, and feminine-high and masculine-high website preferences. Why is this important? This article is reliable because it came from Academic Search Premier and published in the International Journal of Technology and Design Education. Also the Author, Denise Agosto, is from the “College of Information Science and Technology” at Drexel University.