People tend to focus entirely on Web design for adults. It hit us the other day, “why not look at web design for kids?” Doing some searching we narrowed down some of the most popular, best designed, and most unique websites for kids. Some are a lot like typical ‘adult’ sites, while some are vastly different. Keep an eye out for trends, I’m sure you’ll spot a few.
Silly Poems
With a bright design, big buttons and pictures, and an overall kid-friendly look, Silly Poems nails the “for kids” style of web design.
Disney’s Club Penguin
There’s a lot going on at this site, but Disney’s Club Penguin is easy to navigate, and fun to play around with. It gets cited a lot as a high point of web design for children, and it’s reputation is deserved.
PBS Kids
PBS Kids’ home page is nearly devoid of text, and this encourages kids to play around with the various pictures and interface elements. Almost everything reacts to contact with the mouse, and although navigation is left wide open, what is an isn’t clickable is extremely apparent. Moving around the site shows more awesome kid-friendly design. A personal favorite is the flash animation you find when clicking the Sesame Street link off the main site. Kids actually watch Elmo build the interface they will soon be using.
Yahoo Kids
Yahoo’s site for kids features animated elements, lots of pictures, big text, and a bright theme. It incorporates several ‘adult’ design elements such as a tag cloud, but uses them in a way that kids can understand.
Lego
Lego’s website is designed to be explored and to interest kids for a long time. They poured a lot of the fun of their toys into the site, and created a site to match what they sell.
National Geographic Kids
National Geographic Kids is a website that understands that pictures are more appealing than text. Lots of appealing images, coupled with some fun animation and bright colors should serve to hold the attention of kids.
Capstone Kids
This publisher’s website for kids is set up to direct kids to various books, and it does so wonderfully.
Hasbro Kids
This site is ugly. It is painful to look at from a typical design standpoint. However from a “will kids like this” perspective, the site is awesome. They cut down text to only what is needed, and focus on pictures. Glancing at this site you can quickly pick out games and movies, and get a quick feel for what you’ll be getting when you click something.
Discovery Kids
This action filled website even changes your cursor into chomping jaws.
Duplo
Duplo is Lego’s brand for younger children, and this site reflects that change in target audience.
Nasa Kids
Nasa’s Website for kids looks similar to it’s adult counterpart, but more age appropriate. All the space themed pieces are cool, and help drive home the location. (This is NASA, not Disney!)
Ask Kids
A kid friendly search engine and entertainment stop. Ask is designed so there is minimal searching for anything, even after you search.
WhyVille
Whyville is an odd case. It has both new kid-friendly features, but also is carrying over the old trend of left-alignment.
Sesame Street
Sesame Street’s own website. It is an excellent example of not making kids work to see all the page contents. Kids aren’t as likely to scroll down as adults, and putting everything in one spot is good for them.
Harry Potter (Scholastic)
This is Scholastic’s site for Harry Potter, and thus bears no real link with the various movie sites. Everything is designed to be clickable here, and there is a lot of animation showing kids what they can and can’t do.
ASPCA Animaland
The ASPCA’s site for kids. While it has a lot in common with ‘adult’ layouts, this one seems like it was tuned specifically for kids. Information is big and easily viewable, and there is a lot to grab attention.
Disney Game Kingdom
The Flash games hub of Disney. Packed with stuff for kids to do. Another ‘compact space’ design, there is no need for much navigation to find something to do. An intro video plays, showing just the right highlights to give kids a taste of the games they can play.
PBS Kids Democracy
A bright and unique site designed to teach kids the significance of democracy in America, and help them understand the 2008 election. This site is a perfect example of design specifically for kids. Nothing about this looks like it was pulled from another portion of PBS’ site. Everything is bright, flashy, and unique.
Jumpstart
Before the web took off the way it did, Jumpstart made some of the best educational software around. Today it looks like they’ve embraced the web as their new platform.
Shidonni World
A colorful and whimsical site, set up for kids to click all over.
Now that you’ve seen these sites, take a look at this one from 2000.
Yucky!
This site looks old and feels old, and rightfully so! It hasn’t changed in a decade! Back then the now-fading use of left justification was huge, and as you can see the site is built so that it will fit on a 640×480 screen.
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