Rachel test-drives Nosy Crow's first app
Posted by Kate on Aug 13, 2010
This evening, Kate was on a very busy train. At the first station out of London, a mum and two little girls got on, one of whom sat in the empty seat next to Kate. She wriggled and sighed and looked pretty bored, so Kate, who was planning to work, took out her iPad and introduced her to the magic screen.
She’d just turned four, and hadn’t seen an iPad before, and it was interesting to see how quickly she got to grips with it. At first she asked what to do next, but Kate let her find out, and she gained confidence incredibly fast. Once she worked out that touching the screen meant that things happened, she very quickly discarded even beautiful apps that didn’t deliver in terms of interactivity.
One of her favourite was DoodleBuddy, and she particularly liked the stickers. But the one that made her laugh was the prototype of Nosy Crow’s 3-D Three Little Pigs app, where she bounced the pigs and made them grunt and raced them down the road away from the big bad wolf in his van.
Kate did no work at all.
Comments (4)
Surely this could count as research ;)
Natasha Friday August 13, 2010 #
You are quite right, of course: I was working. But it didn’t really feel like it. She’s a really nice child, for whom, I think, English was one of two home languages, and she had a particularly nice turn of phrase: “I think I need the drawing now” and then, “I think I need the pigs now”.
Kate Wilson Friday August 13, 2010 #
Do you think she found the touch screen a natural thing to use? i.e. more natural thing to adapt to than a normal, Playstation controller, or mouse? Do think it was similar to interaction with a book? Can’t wait to see the Three Little Pigs App. Guerrilla consumer research, I love it!
James McKnight Tuesday August 17, 2010 #
Well, I haven’t seen her use any other device, but, as I said she entirely ‘got’ the touchscreen – and was disappointed when things didn’t do anything when she touched them.
Kate Wilson Wednesday August 18, 2010 #