Measuring Children and the Adolscent’s Ability Comprehension of Textual and Graphical Symbols Used in a User Intrface Portal

The user interface is the first point of contact with a website. If the content of the website, especially its textual and graphic symbols, does not match with the ability of users to comprehend it, they will probably leave the website. This research has measured comprehensibility of the textual and graphic symbols used in the user interface of a portal designed for children and young adults.

The statistical population included 600 children and adolescents active members in three centers belong to the Institute for Intellectual Development for Children and Adolescents (IDCA) in Birjand (Iran). A randomly selected sample of 115 through a non-relative stratified method answered the researcher-made questionnaire, prepared after examining theoretical and research literature as well as examining user interface environments of children's portals. In the present study, the standard vocabulary of IDCA thesaurus was used to prepare a text-by-text questionnaire. The portal examined was “koodak24”.

The ability of children and adolescents to identify the textual and graphic symbols of the child portal was more than optimal. But their ability to combine symbols was variable (the significance level in the above test is equal to the value of 0.000 and smaller than the value of 0.05). Also, there was a difference in identifying textual and graphic symbols between different age groups (P<0.05). There is a significant difference between the two age groups (10 to 12) and (14 to 16) years, and the average ability to identify graphical symbols of the user interface in the age group of 10 to 12 years is 71.82 and this average in the age group of 14 to 16 years is 76. there was no difference between the ability of girls and boys to identify textual and graphic symbols.

The words used in the portal for children and adolescent are simple, understandable and standard. If the mental and cognitive abilities of children and teenagers as well as their needs are taken into account in designing the user interface, it will be easy and attractive for children and adolescent to identify the graphical and textual symbols of the user interface and use different parts of websites.