Cbeebies ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer Channel
It's odd writing a blog piece about a new product that none of your intended audience can read.
But that illustrates why the latest ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer release for Cbeebies (which went live today) needed such a different visual treatment.
Cbeebies is one of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's most loved brands - hugely appreciated by parents, but often overlooked by those without children. It's target audience is the under sixes (from preschoolers up to early primary ages) and the main website is designed to work as both a dual experience (for parents with toddlers to play on together) and a solo activity for the older children as they become more web literate.
That in itself is quite a complex but the added complication is that you can't assume the same level of literacy as you do on adult sites.
So we've been working with the iPlayer team to come up with a walled garden version of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iplayer that children can navigate without resorting to too much text based navigation.
The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's been making websites for children for over 10 years now and we've built a good body of knowledge about what constitutes best practice regarding usability for this age group. Young children are generally drawn by strong colours, they have an amazing ability to spot and recall individual programmes characters, and they are generally very good mimics. Once they identify an icon or user path they'll repeat it ad nauseam directing their grown-up by pointing to the screen or navigating themselves.
by on flickr
is often quite hard (not least because most aren't designed for small hands) so bigger buttons are essential. And text, even amongst the advanced children, tends to be overlooked whenever we do tests.
So the build of the Cbeebies iPlayer has had to incorporate all these best practice design features. In our tests, children and parents really like it.
Now there are some who will question why our children need access to yet more television. But this is not designed as a baby-sitting service - it's primarily a tool for parents and carers to have MORE control of their children's viewing NOT less.
We've intentionally targetted all the promotional links to the player at adults not children. And our research shows what parents and carers want more than anything is the ability to timeshift those favourite shows.
Our TV output on the Cbeebies channel is scheduled across the day with family routines in mind, but it can never be guaranteed to fit it with every household's hectic requirements. The Cbeebies Iplayer allows the grown-ups in the house to set the viewing timetable and better still, dictate what shows get shown.
So when there's the inevitable temper tantrum, you've always got the option to offer the ankle-biters "Time-out" with their favourite show. Other parents will just want to plan their children's screen time so it's not just a case of watching what happens to be on the box.
At Cbeebies we're not in the business of telling carers how they should bring up their kids or what the correct parenting approach should be in such situations, but we do know parents do value Cbeebies programming as educational and informative complement to the other activities their kids enjoy.
So the Cbeebies iplayer is designed to allow adults to set viewing patterns on their terms whilst the child-friendly interface both protects against any inadvertant selection of non-children's content (when their attention is distracted). Hopefully it will encourage more shared viewing and interaction around the shows the children appreciate most.
Marc Goodchild is Head of Interactive and On Demand, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Childrens
Comment number 1.
At 8th May 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:I have a concern, should CBeebies (and possibly C³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ) be the exception to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ wide corporate website style guide, that coloured button above and to the left of the 'turn page' CBeeies logo on the right looks inviting...and could lead to all sorts of content that an unsupervised child should probably not be exposed to...
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Comment number 2.
At 8th May 2009, richiethom wrote:"Currently Cbeebies iPlayer TV shows are available to play in the UK only, but all Cbeebies iPlayer Radio shows are available to you."
I didn't know there was Cbeebies radio too...I am abroad by the way, sadly your geolocation code is working correctly!
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Comment number 3.
At 11th May 2009, Ed Lyons wrote:Purely out of interest, do you find that 'cartoony' handwriting-like fonts are actually beneficial to children using your websites? I understand that bright primary colours are helpful (though I'm not sure the details of that), but to me it's harder to read these fonts than the more standard fonts available.
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Comment number 4.
At 11th May 2009, KristinaBrooker wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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