[hluska]

I parent completely differently than most, but this top three really gets me:

- Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t read it

How do kids learn to read without exposure?

- Text takes up valuable space that could be used for better graphics or aesthetically pleasing empty space

But again, how do you teach kids to read?

- Text is visually unattractive and off-putting to most children.

Nonsense - text is only visually unattractive to children because we treat them like they can’t interact with it. Text is a visual representation of language - if it’s ’offputting’ to your children, you fumbled at the goal line.

For the love of children, stop wasting neuroplasticity. By the first grade, your teachers know how much you promote the written language at home. By grade four, the damage has been done.

[shaneos]

Author here. Not every app needs to be focused on teaching kids to read. When my 3 year old was using the app, putting words on the icons was meaningless, and a sign that I needed to put more effort into communicating visually. Older kids can handle more text, but I found that the app could achieve it's primary functions without it, and there is a beauty in simplicity.

Of course I read with my children every day, and they are now both voracious consumers of real world books. I encourage you to do the same. I also included features in Kidz Fun Art that help kids practice their hand writing and math problem solving. However, trying to have every app solve every need for every child (e.g. reading in this case), just leads to an ugly, messy interface that is off putting to everyone. Add lightness - take things away that are not needed.

[mrweasel]

Exposing text to children in context is a pretty good way for them to learn to recognize words, at least that's my experience. My kid can sort of read short words, but recognize longer words in context.

I would however agree with the article, if we were talking about adult. Previously I worked for a webshop and good percentage of our customer could not or would not read. Sure a few have honest to god dyslexia and struggle to use you site if you use to much text, but even excluding those you'd still end up with a bunch of illiterates who will ignore any amount of text and just look at the pretty pictures and price. You might as well design certain sites for the dyslexic and avoid having to attempt to provide textual guides to morons who refuse to read but will complain at any opportunity.

We where dragged to the ombudsman for a subscription service (which I'd agree was stupid, but we never attempted to trick anyone). The case was dropped when we showed that the purchasing flow said subscription and mentioned the price at least nine times before asking for your credit card info. A number of customers apparently missed that because the lower price was tied to a subscription service.

The article is correct, but it doesn't only apply to children: "Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t (won't) read it"

[atoav]

I finished Diablo 1 in English at age 9 without being able to understand a single word of English.

Kids can be much more willing to endure not understanding everything as long as there is something motivating them to go forward, in this case cool skeletons, adventure and so on.

[gpm]

I notice the app does actually use text, e.g. whenever a tool is selected it seems to describe what it does (with a few words).

This doesn't seem obviously wrong? If you make not being able to read blocking - children who can't read won't use it. If you make reading merely enhance the experience, now there's motivation to learn how to read?

I'm not a child psychologist or anything, or even a parent, I don't know what's best. But it's seems possible to me that this is the right balance.

[mapotofu]

I’m a parent and agree with the assertion that text is visually unattractive and off-putting to most children. I’ve read to my kid (pre K) a lot (a lot), and he can read (a little), but he took more interest in learning to read through an app-based game that applied this principle, in teaching reading skills (Poio read).

It’s not that they can’t, it’s just not fun. Like when I play video games and not liking too much text before the action starts, but with shorter attention spans.

The age group included also has a lot of innocence that should be protected/balanced against future expectations, depending on where they are. There’s a lot of space and utility to letting kids be kids, they trust you more IMO when you do, making later lessons stick better. YMMV

[card_zero]

I notice sometimes that there's a feedback loop where children like things that look like toys. Sometimes they say it out loud - look, it's for kids! - and they like these objects because of a sense of automatic ownership. So the whole brightly-colored-sparkly-smiley-plastic aesthetic might have only slight inherent interest for them, and more interest as a signal saying "this is yours, you have permission to play with it". Being covered in writing is the opposite signal.

It's a feedback loop because then of course toys are designed to look more and more like toys.

[cafp12]

Maybe they don't need to learn to read through an art application?

[humanfromearth9]

Actually, when learning to read, you want children to be exposed for a long time and recurrently to a large quantity of text. The quality of the text should be a later objective, when reading has been acquired.

Anecdotally, I've tried to teach my son to read from quite a young age, but it didn't work well, mainly because his brain was not ready for it (that happens often with children: they seem to not understand something despite your efforts to teach them, then suddenly, a few months later, you realize that it spontaneously clicked and they perfectly master the subject/reasoning). Then one of his friends began reading the One Piece mangas (because his older brother was reading them). Like his friend with his brother, my son became intrigued by the story and I bought him the books. That was 5.5 months ago, he had just become 7 years old. He has now reached number 38, his reading ability improved in ways I would have never imagined before. Now he's fluent in reading and started to write a kind of journal.

Qualitatively, I do consider One Piece to be poor. Not only the text, also the pictures. Still, the focus on quantity during the last months has fundamentally changed his relation to text and books. Since then, he has also read a number of other books (children novels with almost no pictures) and Belgian/French comics.

We'll see about higher quality readings later, when pleasure of reading is deeply ingrained and fear is completely gone.

If one is not confronted with text, how should one become fluent in reading and writing?

"On ne fait bien que ce qu'on fait d'habitude."/One only does well what one does usually. (Pr Philippe Boxho)

[vages]

And maybe they do? If you make the elevator more accessible than the stairs, people get lazy.

[cafp12]

Huh is there like an epidemic of children who can't read because kid pix doesn't have words in it?

[bluGill]

Kids are mentally not ready to read before some age, and once they are able to learn it takes a lot of training. you cannot assume a 7 year old is a good reader - even if they are the best for their age they are still really bad at it.

if you want quick usage a good graphic is faster than text for simple concept even in the best readers. if you have complex concepts eventually text is better but for the majority of ui text is worse than good graphics for the great reader, and many adults are not great readers.

you also shouldn't assume any language. a little effort with non text based and your app doesn't need expensive translation.

of course a learn to read app needs to provide text. However for most apps text is a sign that you didn't spend enough time in ux design.

[bongodongobob]

- Text does not actually provide guidance to a large percentage of your user base as they can’t read it

Even if they can read, people still ignore it. Our help desk gets at least one ticket a week like "Help! Outlook doesn't work!" and it's just a pop up asking them for their password.