Hidden symbols: How informal symbolism in digital interfaces disrupts usability for preschoolers

Guest editorial: Beyond digital youth: understanding, supporting, and designing for young people’s digital experiences

“…Instead, product developers design for an "imagined average user," who tends to reflect the people on their product team rather than the actual users of the technology they are designing. In addition to failing to account for the broader range of identities, privilege and sociocultural experiences in the general population, designing for the imagined average user overlooks important developmental considerations, such as information processing capacity, symbolic reasoning, attentional skills and fine motor control (Anthony, 2019;Hiniker et al, 2015Hiniker et al, , 2016Meyer et al, 2021;Soni et al, 2019).…”

A Developmental Perspective on Young Children’s Understandings of Paired Graphics Conventions From an Analogy Task

“…It seems that designers of the symbolic graphic displays that are so widely used today may attribute an unrealistically high level of transparency to the meaning of such representations, especially for children (Hiniker et al, 2016). However, it is becoming apparent that younger children may lack the skills required to grasp the designer's intended meaning, something that is potentially highly problematic in an educational context that increasingly relies on explanatory graphics.…”