Understanding Kids, Play, and Interactive Design: How to Create Engaging Games Children Love for Home and School Use

This book is a way of sharing insights empirically gathered, over decades of interactive media development, by the author and other children’s designers. Included is as much emerging theory as possible in order to provide background for practical and technical aspects of design while still keeping the information accessible. The author's intent for this book is not to create an academic treatise but to furnish an insightful and practical manual for the next generation of children’s interactive media and game designers.Key FeaturesProvides practical detailing of how children's developmental needs and capabilities translate to specific design elements of a piece of mediaServes as an invaluable reference for anyone who is designing interactive games for children (or adults)Detailed discussions of how children learn and how they playProvides lots of examples and design tips on how to design content that will be appealing and effective for various age rangesAccessible approach, based on years of successful creative business experience, covers basics across the gamut from developmental needs and learning theories to formats, colors, and sounds