Engaging the text generation

 By Clare Mitchell Crow

Clients often ask us whether children use the web in a different way to us adults, and so whether they should include children in research projects. We’ve found that including children often turns up some pretty interesting results.

While watching Red Nose Day’s Apprentice episode on Comic Relief, where the teams of celebrity entrepreneurs were tasked with getting feedback from school children on their ideas, I was reminded of the work we have been doing recently with a similar audience. With children, you can certainly count on some honest feedback – although, just as with adults, you must be careful not to ask leading questions.

With most of the face to face customer experience research we carry out, the consultant sits with the participant to facilitate the session. However, we ran some research with children recently where we exited the room, giving tasks and observing behaviour ‘Big Brother’-style from just down the corridor. We asked the children to view and navigate around a website, and to tell us what they thought of it as they were moving around the site. We observed and listened to them remotely (their voices, physical behaviour, and computer screen). And once we left the room, we found they were very observant and articulate, giving better feedback than when we remained in the room.

Maybe it was the lack of authority figure – or maybe we’d all feel more relaxed without someone peering over our shoulder, whatever our age – but we found this approach very effective. But whatever the observation method, children certainly give you a fresh viewpoint – plus you can directly tell if a site isn’t engaging by observing their wriggles.