Research On The Natural User Interface In Mobile Apps For Preschoolers

The mobile apps have gradually extended to every corner of people’s lives. Naturally,preschoolers are affected by the environment of mobile apps during their growth and gradually becoming an important user group. The main purpose that the preschoolers use the apps is to entertain. Unlike adults who often force themselves to use a mobile app with flawed design in order to complete a task, preschoolers will give up the apps when they can’t handle or experience boredom from the apps. And with physical, psychological and cognitive limitations, preschoolers have different behaviors from adults when using mobile apps. With the development of technology, more natural interactive modes have gradually been used in mobile apps, and make the interaction between the users and the apps more consistent with human nature. This thesis will focus on the role that natural user interface plays in preschoolers’ use of mobile apps.This thesis summarizes the impact of the preschooler’s physiological and psychological characteristics to the preschoolers when they use the mobile-app, and combs the history of human-computer interaction’s development, and analyzes the differences between the graphical user interface and the natural user interface. This thesis also analyzes the technologies that support mobile devices for natural interaction and the interactive modes that they cause, and then summarizes four input methods of mobile apps by combining with the psychological characteristics of preschoolers: touch gesture caused by multi-touch technology,voice interaction caused by speech recognition technology, 3D gesture caused by gesture recognition technology, chassis gesture caused by a variety of sensing technologies. This thesis also studies the multi-modal for the natural interaction, and summarizes three output channels that can be used on the mobile apps based on the technology current situation: visual,auditory and tactile. Then, research of the interactive models about the existing preschoolers’ mobile apps is accomplished, and through the analysis of the seven preschoolers’ mobile apps,this thesis finds that: at present the existing preschoolers’ mobile apps almost stay in visual and auditory channel in the output mode, and are limited in touch gesture in the input mode.Then on-the-spot observation and survey are carried out, and find that: except touch gesture,preschoolers also show great interest in other input modes. This thesis also carries out the qualitative investigation of natural interactive behaviors when preschoolers use mobile apps,and summarizes the natural interaction behaviors.Based on the previous study, the system model is constructed for preschoolers’ mobile apps natural interaction. In the three level system model framework, design principles for the preschoolers mobile apps of natural interaction are put forward, including two aspects: on the one hand, there are eight design principles on the level of software: consistency and difference,controlling, natural-match of concept-model, proper guidance, enlightening metaphor, timely and effective feedback, low precision operation, multi-modal integration; on the other hand,the realization of natural interaction is related to the hardware that the app is attached, so three design principles are put forward: fitting children’s ergonomics, durability, and safety. Then,an evaluation of a preschooler-app is carried out, and according to the results of the assessment, the app is redesigned and reevaluated. It validates the feasibility of using this system model to guide the design of natural interaction about the preschooler-mobile-app. It should be noticed that the system model of natural interaction about preschooler-mobile-app that this thesis has summarized is not static. It continues to develop and change with the development of technology.