Warren Buckleitner

In class today we had Warren Buckleitner as a guest speaker through video chat. All I can say is that I would love to have his job. He does Children's Technology Review where he reviews all of the latest children's toys and also runs Dust or Magic which is a Wiki about which children's toys are great (Magic) or which ones fail (Dust). I think this would be a very fun job because 1) he gets to play with toys all day and 2) he gets to work with children. On a more serious note, I am actually really interested in usability. I think that working with kids in "interactive media" development would be a fun way to combine my interests in Information Technology and Psychology plus I have a lot of experience working with kids.

Warren showed us several toys, from the new Sony move to a really obnoxious Mikey Mouse toy, and talked about what makes a toy successful and what makes it fail. I found the Children's Interactive Media Evaluation Form very helpful and will use it to evaluate the software I will be developing in class. The evaluation uses the following categories to evaluate children's software:

I. Ease of Use (Can my child use it with minimal help?)
II. Childproof (Is it designed with child-reality in mind?)
III. Educational (What can my child learn from this program?)
IV. Entertaining (Is this program fun to use?)
V. Design Features (How smart is this program?)
VI. Value (How much does it cost vs. what it does? Is it worth it?)

An important thing to remember is  "kids + creepy people + money = never good"