Five Things I Learned:

1. Books with bits engage pre-school children much more then books with just words or pictures, whether that is including AR, or embedding within electronics or something simpler like including a sticker page. Creating interactive books is a truly collaborative process, the number of people involved is between 10 – 15, these books are not single authored products.

2. Involved in the user experience- Tactile stimulation, visual stimulation, auditory stimulation, written language, spoken language, motor skills, parent/child bonding, independent exploration, rhyme, music.

3. Interactive book makers for children use the same techniques as software and website developers, to create Interactive books. User testing in the early stages is integral to the process, finding out if something works before you publish it, not after and including children (the users) in that process.

4. Children rarely remember anything before the age of five. Using research to develop products that reach all children and are inclusive is paramount, with that in mind, those are the type of books that will make a difference to parents and children’s lives and remain ethical.

5. You only need to test something with 5 people and they will pick up on 80% of the problems with your products.