Natural User Interface for Children: From Requirement to Design

The emergence of natural user interface (NUI) provides children with more natural interaction. However, NUI developed are commonly inappropriate for their age, due to the lacking in understanding of their needs and the problems they face. This paper presents a research on natural user interface (NUI) for children where the understanding of the issues of usage and their requirement was gathered from literature review and analysis of a usability study. The identification of usability issues were gathered from an observation research of two types of NUI: free-form represented by Kinect; and touch-form represented by tablet iPad. Our observation from video recording analysis and interviews discovered that touch-form NUI is harder to recall, but its simple and straightforward gestures are easier to be performed as long as it does not involve finger-gestures. On the other hand, free-form NUI is more natural and easier to recall but unfortunately troubled by many unwanted gesture interpretations. By using analytical model, these findings were inter-related to input-system-output point of view that help us to propose recommendations to improve NUI interaction and proposes a NUI prototype design to aid children in learning.