Guidelines for designing human interfaces for children and their application to the Koron-net communication system

When information is used for communication, it becomes what we at Fujitsu refer to as `information media.' These days there are many opportunities for children to use information media such as e-mail and BBSs. A designer of a human interface (HI) for children must understand the gap between an information media and its users. We have developed human interface design guidelines to bridge this gap from the cognitive and ethnological viewpoints. We applied our guidelines to the design of Koron-net, which is a communication system designed for children. This paper describes our guidelines and a trial use of Koron-net between three primary schools that was conducted to examine our design approaches.