Online Video for Elementary-Aged Kids

Programme 44 24/2011/E

Silvia Lovato Online video for elementary-aged kids

Lessons learned while making the PBS KIDS GO! video player

The US-American public broad- the videos easy to find and organize. short amount of text can be daunting. caster PBS shares insights on their The metadata, meaning all the bits The sessions took place over the online video player for kids: Find- of information associated with each course of 1 day in July of 2008. A ing specific video content requires video (titles, length, keywords, etc.), moderator conducted 30-minute in- understanding labels and knowing was compiled with help from our terviews with the children, and the how a video player works. The de- program producers, while the task of production team watched from be- sign can be made more intuitive by designing the interface and deciding hind a one-way mirror. Our main goal choosing words and icons that are how to label the different areas of the for the test was not only to find out close to the children’s knowledge. player fell on the in-house PBS KIDS whether subjects understood the basic GO! Interactive team. tasks involved in using a video player (play, pause, advance, rewind, etc.), BS KIDS GO! is a program- but also to assess how well they un- Tests in the usability lab ming block on PBS stations on derstood concepts such as playlists, Pweekday afternoons that fea- As with every new area of the website ratings, search, links to related con- tures Arthur, Cyberchase, WordGirl, we produce, a prototype was created tent and closed captions. Here is some FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman and The and submitted to usability testing by of what we learned in the usability Electric Company. On the web, the children. The goal of usability test- lab, and the changes we made to the brand includes many other prop- ing is usually to determine whether interface as a result. erties for the 6 to 10 age range. In or not users are able to perform the 2008, PBS received a grant from tasks required to use the website. Kids use characters CPB (Corporation for Public Broad- Even though we are interested in the to look for videos casting) to turn its PBS KIDS GO! appeal and engagement potential of website (http://pbskidsgo.org) into new areas of our site, the main focus From the beginning, we thought kids a broadband experience. The main of these sessions is to ensure that the would gravitate towards finding vid- element of this transition was the ad- navigational elements and labels are eos by program, guided by character dition of a video player with clips understood and that children are able icons. Characters are what they know, and full episodes from every program to complete tasks involved in an aver- so we created a tab labeled “shows”, that airs under the PBS KIDS GO! age use scenario. where kids could find character icons brand, as well as some select content To test the PBS KIDS GO! video that would lead to clips and episodes from our preschool series and original player prototype, we interviewed 12 from a particular program (see ill. 1). web content. Ahead of us was a big children ages 6 to 10. While the 6 to This worked well during the usability project: besides digitizing and cutting 10 age range makes sense on televi- test. However, it was important for all this content into online-friendly sion, on the Web, where we depend us at PBS to give children a way to clips, we had to think about how to on kids to make decisions to keep the explore new content and to find vid- organize it in a way that made sense experience going, this group proves eos based on their interests. We also for 6- to 10-year-olds. This involved to be very uneven. 10-year-olds are wanted to showcase not just to kids, not just designing an age-appropriate able to easily follow on-screen in- but to parents and teachers, all the interface for kids, but also creating a structions, but 6-year-olds are usually different curriculum areas covered by metadata scheme that would make emerging readers for whom even a our programming. Programme 24/2011/E 45

ed. In a previous study, done in the summer of 2007, younger kids had waited for some time for something to happen after the site loaded. We had wanted to give kids a chance to click on what they wanted to watch before anything started, but the usability testing confirmed that they expected it to just start playing. Giving them an initial set of featured clips also allows us to show timely content, such as videos about holidays and seasons, as well as promotional material about new episodes premiering that week both online and on TV. © 2011 PBS. All rights reserved. rights All PBS. 2011 © Ill. 1: PBS KIDS GO! online video player before the usability test Full screen vs. full length About half of the children interviewed either did not understand what “full screen” meant, or interpreted it to mean full episode. We had also labeled full episodes as “full length”, which some kids thought meant full screen. As a result, we changed the labeling in the full screen button to “big” (see ill. 2). Once in full screen, kids can return to the standard video player interface by clicking on the “small” button.

Associated content: games and contextual links For the last 10 years, PBS has been working with the producers of its programs to offer online experiences to children that target the same educa- © 2011 PBS. All rights reserved. rights All PBS. 2011 © tional goals as the television series, Ill. 2: The new PBS KIDS GO! online video player after the usability test, with changed features but taking advantage of the interactivity available on the Web. This means not raise expectations about the func- What should we call the video creating games and activities that ad- tionality. Next to the more obvious player’s theme-based area? dress the program’s curriculum (see school-related channels like “Math”, Internally, we had been calling these box on p. 47). Since 2002, we have we offered others like “Robots”, curriculum areas “themes”, but we been entering every online activity “Scary” and even “Gross”. The big- knew that word would not appeal to into a database and associating it with gest hit during the first few months of the target audience, so we initially the episode that is the closest match the player was the “Dogs” channel, labeled the thematic sets of videos to its curricular objectives. We started featuring lots of our canine friends, “playlists”. To kids in the usability doing this to be able to tell parents and from Ruff Ruffman to Wishbone. test, however, that word meant a list caregivers where to go on the website you make in your personal music after watching the program on TV. player. Ultimately, we went with What happens when the video Now, with the video available online, “channels” (see ill. 2). Even though player loads? these existing connections meant we it was not perfect (we were afraid From earlier tests, we knew that many could offer kids links to related games kids might interpret it to mean other kids, especially the younger ones, ex- as they watched each video. But even networks), the meaning was clear as pected videos to start playing auto- though kids are usually drawn to any soon as kids clicked on it, and it did matically when the video player load- thing labeled “games”, the related Programme 46 24/2011/E games button on the player did not parents, teachers, and older children, interface still works). As of the writ- get noticed as often as we had hoped. but learned quickly that our core audi- ing of this article, the PBS KIDS GO! There was no easy solution for this ence was not interested in looking for team is about to launch a redesign of problem and we are still exploring content that way. Usability trends do the player based on traffic numbers ways to make the connection to the evolve, so this issue will be revisited and observations made during other games clear without disrupting the in a future testing session. rounds of usability testing (focused video experience. One possibility we primarily on other parts of the site). are considering is to pause the player Closed-captioning Some of the changes we are making after each video and offer kids the Part of PBS’s mission is to make in 2010 include a persistent character option to click on a game or keep content accessible to the widest pos- navigation bar that lets kids find their watching. sible audience, including the hearing- favorite character from any part of the impaired. Only a few of the children interface, the ability to sort “channels” Ratings and favorites: are kids knew what closed-captioning was. alphabetically in the “all channels” interested? When asked to try it, 1 girl was ex- screen (a teacher request) and most The ability to rate content has become cited by the possibility of turning the importantly, each child will be able to a standard feature of most video sites sound off and continuing to watch save his or her favorite videos on a per- meant for older audiences. For us, rat- past her bedtime, since her mother sonal playlist. In preparation for this ings could be more than just a feature would not be able to hear anything. feature, we redesigned the PBS KIDS for kids: it had the potential to be a GO! login system, which involved quick way to discover what resonates another round of usability testing. What we learned with them. We started out with a regu- But let’s shift to another age group: lar 1-to-5 stars rating system. During Here is some of what we learned How well do early-elementary age the testing, the moderator asked kids about online video players in the us- children understand the idea of reg- what that was. While most of the older ability lab: istering and logging in to a website? kids understood, almost all of them •• Finding specific video content This question was – among many tried to click on each star they wanted requires understanding labels others – at the core of 2 other us- to give to the video, not understand- and knowing how a video player ability testing sessions, and is cov- ing that by clicking on the first star works. We can make this intui- ered in another article in this issue. they were giving that particular video tive by choosing words and icons one star. This caused confusion and that are simple and close to their PBS KIDS Interactive frustration, with many videos acci- knowledge and experience. dentally being rated one star. To make •• Children often find content by Chris Bishop, Creative Director the ratings system more user friendly, browsing, i.e. clicking on icons, Sara DeWitt, Vice-President we changed the format from 5 stars to pictures and titles, and not so much Ocean Eiler, Designer one trophy with the label “I like it!”. by searching. It is important to Karin Jue, Digital Producer have a clear path to all content, Silvia Lovato, Director, PBS All browsing, no searching either by program or by subject. KIDS GO! When we asked kids how they would •• Children are able to quickly learn Renzo Olguin, Flash Developer go about finding a specific segment, new concepts or conventions. So in Nina Walia, Associate Director, almost all kids chose browsing by cases when there is no clear child- PBS KIDS program and clicking on each avail- friendly term, producers should not able segment, even though the search be afraid to introduce new ideas the author box was visible on the screen. After and words. being asked by the moderator if they Silvia Lovato is knew what the box was for, most Still evolving the director of the kids said they did know, and tried PBS KIDS GO! to use it, though not in the way we The PBS KIDS GO! video player website. She has expected. Instead of using keywords, launched September 2nd 2008, and been a Web Pro- kids tended to type in exactly what since the first week has seen an aver- ducer for over 12 they wanted, as if ordering at a res- age of over 1 million stream requests years and came to PBS in 2000, taurant: to find videos about dogs, per week. You can see it at http:// after completing an MA program in for example, 1 child typed “videos pbskidsgo.org/video (due to rights Communication, Culture and Tech- about dogs” into the search box. We limitations, the video does not play nology at Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA. kept the search box for the benefit of outside of the United States, but the Programme 24/2011/E 47

In-video Games

Putting our programs online was exciting for us because it offered a number of possibilities: letting kids watch what they want when they want, and also making connections with related content that before depended on visi- tors remembering a web address they saw on TV. But we wanted to try something that could only be done on the computer: adding interactivity to the videos. After identifying a technology that enabled this interactive layer (Panache, a plugin originally intended for interactive advertising), we offered training sessions to producers.

In March of 2009, following more usability testing, we added a games tab to the video player, where kids can play games as they watch the video. For this project, we worked with the producers of 4 PBS KIDS GO! block programs: Arthur (WGBH), FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman (WGBH Boston), Cyberchase (Thirteen/WNET), and WordGirl (Scholastic Entertainment). Each producer was given a grant to develop interactive layers for clips of their programs.

The games had one aspect in common: they were all created for existing video content, meaning no one created a segment specifically planning to turn it into a game. Several different approaches were used:

•• For Arthur, which is a program that attracts younger viewers, WGBH created a game where the video stopped at certain points and kids were invited to answer a question about what they had just watched, which could be done by clicking on the correct picture out of a set.

•• In WordGirl, there is a character that uses made-up, incorrect words. One of the games created by Scholastic asked kids to click on a large button each time they heard a made-up word.

•• In Cyberchase, producers at WNET used 2 segments featuring the villain Hacker’s sidekicks, Buzz and Delete. In both games, WNET/THIRTEEN All Rights Reserved. Cyberchase characters © PBS. © 2011 Buzz and Delete are trying to fig- ure something out and fail (they are playfully goofy characters). At that point, the viewer/player is asked to try to help them. The cartoon freezes and zooms into the object that was being manipulated by the characters, allowing kids to attempt to solve the problem.

•• In FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman, the only live-action program in this group, the producers chose to create a game where children had to do similar tasks to the ones being performed by children on the screen (race a dolphin, or pack chocolate into boxes using a conveyor belt).

While the usability testing for these games helped producers refine things like speed and number of questions, none of the concepts were completely redesigned as a result. Over the course of the past year, however, the traffic to the games shows clearly that manipulating elements the characters had been playing with (both of Cyberchase’s games) is the most popular format, suggesting that this might be the most engaging way to integrate interactivity with video.