Understanding Kids, Play, and Interactive Design is a comprehensive guide that offers magical techniques to creating award-winning titles for kids. Learn the best-kept secrets, from understanding ages and stages and how that applies to design, identifying and using over 30 play patterns, to adding delightful audio, humor, and the magic of surprise.

This book is a way of sharing insights empirically gathered, over decades of interactive media development, by the author and other children’s designers. Included is as much emerging theory as possible in order to provide background for practical and technical aspects of design while still keeping the information accessible. The author's intent for this book is not to create an academic treatise but to furnish an insightful and practical manual for the next generation of children’s interactive media and game designers. Key Features Provides practical detailing of how children's developmental needs and capabilities translate to specific design elements of a piece of media Serves as an invaluable reference for anyone who is designing interactive games for children (or adults) Detailed discussions of how children learn and how they play Provides lots of examples and design tips on how to design content that will be appealing and effective for various age ranges Accessible approach, based on years of successful creative business experience, covers basics across the gamut from developmental needs and learning theories to formats, colors, and sounds

Interaction Design and Children surveys the research on children's cognitive and motor development, safety issues related to technologies and design methodologies and principles. It also provides an overview of current research trends in the field of interaction design and children and identifies challenges for future research.

Emotion. Ego. Impatience. Stubbornness. Characteristics like these make creating sites and apps for kids a daunting proposition. However, with a bit of knowledge, you can design experiences that help children think, play, and learn. With Design for Kids, you'll learn how to create digital products for today's connected generation.

Creativity, the power of imagination, and the importance of self-expression are celebrated in this inspiring picture book written and illustrated by real-life best friends. This girl is determined to express herself! If she can't draw her dreams, she'll sculpt or build, carve or collage. If she can't do that, she'll turn her world into a canvas. And if everything around her is taken away, she'll sing, dance, and dream... Stunning mixed media illustrations, lyrical text, and a breathtaking gatefold conjure powerful magic in this heartfelt affirmation of art, imagination, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Today's children are typically more techno savvy than adults, and they're expecting more and more sophisticated interactive products. Web 2.0 opens up unprecedented possibilities in the realm of interactive media for children - including virtual worlds, flexible and evolving avatars, social networks, end user programs, mobile applications, educational applications, and internet games. UX designers are the ones who create these products and plenty of literature exists on general UX design, but so little addresses children's design in depth. Decades of research prove that children use and engage with technology differently than adults. Conversely, there is a great deal of academic- and research-based literature on children's design, but it offers little applicable guidance. The market needs a practical book for UX practitioners who are facing the unique design challenges inherent in designing for children (including age considerations, gender, what keeps kids engaged) for the booming Web 2.0 era. Designing Interactive Media for Children - written by a practitioner for practitioners - fills this hole in the market.

Designers, especially design students, rarely have access to children or their worlds when creating products, images, experiences and environments for them. Therefore, fine distinctions between age transitions and the day-to-day experiences of children are often overlooked. Designing for Kids brings together all a designer needs to know about developmental stages, play patterns, age transitions, playtesting, safety standards, materials and the daily lives of kids, providing a primer on the differences in designing for kids versus designing for adults. Research and interviews with designers, social scientists and industry experts are included, highlighting theories and terms used in the fields of design, developmental psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology and education. This textbook includes more than 150 color images, helpful discussion questions and clearly formatted chapters, making it relevant to a wide range of readers. It is a useful tool for students in industrial design, interaction design, environmental design and graphic design with children as the main audience for their creations.