I have been reading, with great interest, a fascinating study from Latitude Research and Read Write Web who have asked children (under 12) what they want from computers and the Internet in the future.

Unsurprisingly, they said games first and foremost, but what did surprise the authours was the kids desire to create things. They wanted to design things, draw and even make their own games. The report is interesting (a summary is here) and it totally backs up extensive research we did with kiwi kids a couple of years ago.

To find out what would be appealing to young children on the Internet, we didn't ask them to imagine the future - I think that's quite hard for anyone to do. Instead we asked them, if they could do anything they wanted when they got home from school - what would it be? The answers were sometimes the simplest of activities "go fishing with nana", "ride my bmx with my brother", etc. We then analysed those activities and came up with four factors that made their favourite activities compelling. Those factors were:

• bonding (doing things with other people, especially family)
• creativity (just like the Latitude study, creating things was shown to be very satisfying)
• mastery (learning and mastering a new skill -"look what I can do")
• exhilaration (something with a bit of speed,  a sense of challenge, a sense of freedom, or that gives them some kind of thrill)

So, if you're trying to appeal to a younger audience then, yes, allowing them to be creative is key, but so are those other three factors - if you could offer them all four in one activity, you'd really be offering them something they would certainly choose above anything else. 

Interestingly, once we'd done the research we also worked with a great group of kids throughout the development of a kids website: the Creative Crew (pictured above) loved contributing to the site. Probably because they got to be part of a "club", come up with game and character ideas, test out instructions for how to make things (like a rocket launcher), and have their own thrills from being part of the development as well as taking home new friends, t-shirts and a certificate to show off at school. 

For ten kids it was all right there - perfect entertainment in making the technology! 

PS: the site is not up any more, but it did go on to win the BEST children's website in the world at the W3 Awards - thanks to the magic 4 ingredients.