EPIC: Research Child-friendly Interface for Calendar / Daily Schedule Viewer

[nelsonic]

Calendars are typically not designed for children. 🧒
In general, they are made by adults for other adults and then imposed on children.
Many schools use Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange/Outlook and suffer the horrible interface/experience silently because they are powerless to improve it. 🙃

There are many other calendar apps besides Google, Microsoft and Apple:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Calendaring_software
The top 3 are just the most used by far.
There are a handful of Open Source options but none has achieved critical mass adoption. This is clear from the fact that you - learned reader - are not using one of the available open source calendars …
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_calendaring_software

We need to find or build a child-friendly interface to view calendar events. 😍
This needs to be a combination of simplified layout, color coordination/contrasting and icons (emojis) 📆
that children who don’t yet read can easily understand. 💡

The advantage of this approach to interface/experience design
is that what a child can interpret/understand anyone else can too.

Todo

• Research the available child-friendly calendar/schedule interface design online.

  • Please record the Google queries you perform (keywords used) and resulting images you found.
  • If applicable use other image search engines or https://dribbble.com/ to find interface.
  • Go for quantity we want at least 30 screenshots of interface/design. More is better during research phase.

• Once we have researched what is available we can be informed if there is anything we can already use
  If there is nothing ready-made we will need to design something ourselves.

@Stephanymtr I expect the research part of this task to take around T4h. 👩‍💻 ⏳
Please capture your findings directly as comments in this issue. 🖼️
Thanks! 🙏

P.S: this will be used for BMH so it will be immediately practical. 👌

[Stephanymtr]

Hi! I wanted to confirm I read everything and understand the task at hand. I don't have any questions - as of yet. I have to say I can't really picture what the calendar would look like. I understand there are (many) ways of making a calendar a little more interactive and therefore (hopefully) comprehensible and interesting to the little ones. I just can't picture it - yet. I will get started on the research and share my findings here. I will await for feedback to understand when I'm on the right track. Thanks!

[nelsonic]

@Stephanymtr the fact that you don’t have any preconceived ideas for what a child-friendly calendar can/should look like is great! 🎉
It means you have an open mind and can capture as many ideas as you find without being critical of any. Focus on capturing as many as you can. We will review them together when we’re back @home. We will probably print a few of them off to have as reference. 👌

The time you have spent with children and studying Montessori makes you an ideal person to research this. 🔍🕵️‍♀️

if you end up spending more than 4h on it. Just leave a comment to that effect and then keep going. Ultimately we need a thorough survey of the available options. ✅

Thank you! 🙏

[Stephanymtr]

Alright, sounds good! Let's do it!

Google: Calendar for toddlers

I googled the words above and a bunch of (VERY colorful) calendars popped up on my feed. For each of these Google queries, will you want me to share the ones that stand out the most to me ? For ex:

_It's almost alarming how painfully colorful some of the calendar are... some of them have too much information._

Stood out the most to me:

http://www.parraparents.com.au/lifestyle/home/weekly-activity-calendar-for-preschoolers/

https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/1261118671/kids-weekly-planner-with-daily-calendar

I gathered a few questions for later.

• What information do you want in the calendar? Do you want the child to learn the days of the week ? days of the month? holidays? etc
  OR
• Will this calendar focus more on the child's schedule and activities as opposed to the days of the month ?
• Would a weekly calendar make more sense than a monthly calendar ? Children don't tend to think that far into future like us adults do...
• Would this be a fully online calendar ? or will you turn this into a printable calendar? maybe wooden calendar ?

to be continued...

[nelsonic]

Answers to Follow-up Questions

Q1: What information do you want in the calendar? Do you want the child to learn the days of the week ? days of the month? holidays?

A: yes to all these.
We can have several different “views” that give the child (and adults!) more context about their upcoming events.
Right now we are not confining/restricting ourselves to just one. The beauty of a digital system is that we can display the data in any format that is intuitive to the person viewing it. If a large “day” view is best, then that will be displayed. If a weekly view gives the most context then display the week.
If seeing the whole month is relevant and gives the child a clear idea of major events like family events, holidays and birthdays then that should also be available at the tap/swipe of a button/screen. 💡


Q2: Will this calendar focus more on the child's schedule and activities as opposed to the days of the month ?

A: the days of the week/month should be visible but not the focus. This because we are targeting children who cannot yet read. We can iterate on the layout & font sizes based on feedback from people using it. 👌
But yes, the focus should be on the activity/event the child is engaged in or looking forward to.

Q3: Would a weekly calendar make more sense than a monthly calendar ? Children don't tend to think that far into future like us adults do...

A: definitely a weekly view will be far more relevant to the child. But we can easily still have a daily and monthly and even yearly view to help them visualise longer term. The main thing to remember is we will cater to different screen sizes: Mobile/smartphone, iPad, Desktop/Laptop and “XL” (e.g: 50 inch 4K HDR “welcome” + info screen). The “Activities, Events, Birthdays & Meal Menu” info is the perfect info to display on the welcome screen. 📺

Q4: Would this be a fully online calendar ? or will you turn this into a printable calendar? maybe wooden calendar?

A: great questions. 👌
The best place to store and share this type of data/info is digital because updates are instant and synched to everyone. ⚡️
Yes, the calendar will be most relevant to the child and teacher so having one “instance” of it is obviously important,
but it’s also relevant to the Parents and other family.
If the parent doesn’t see the child all day and asks them about their day at the dinner table.
It’s a far more interesting and informative conversation if the parent can ask:
“What did you learn in your music lesson today?”
Rather than the more basic/superficial: “How was school?” …

Most people make their own paper-based calendars - especially historically - because they don’t know how to do it in a digital format.

Most people catch the bus (or train) to school/work.
If they had a better+cheaper means of transport how many would still ride the hot, noisy, smelly bus? 🚌
If you have a teleportation machine, why would you catch the bus? 💭

Not dissing paper, wood or any other physical media. Love seeing things visualised IRL. Never going to stop using a paper notebook for example. But certain types of data simply don’t make sense on paper … like if you have a spreadsheet with lots of formulas and cascading calculations, it doesn’t make much sense to have it on paper the moment you change one value in the spreadsheet and all others change, the paper version is obsolete.
Now, if the goal is for the child to interact with the calendar events/activities e.g. to move them around in a “planning” exercise, then simply have drag-and-drop cards on the screen and make the interface interactive.

[Stephanymtr]

@nelsonic Thank you for answering all my questions. I just want to clarify one more thing. Will you still want me to share physical calendars (like the example above)? Since this will be an online calendar, I wonder if I should only focus my research on the available online calendars out there ... thanks!