It was my good fortune to meet and talk with the creative director and team of PBS Kids Interactive this past Tuesday as part of AIGA DC’s SHINE mentorship program (yes, I am the world’s oldest mentee, and my mentor ROCKS). That hour was one of the best conversations ever. It’s impossible to list in a linear fashion what this great team talked about, but the ideas were provocative. High points: each team member comes from an illustration background and brings that sensibility to site design; a real-world definition of ‘responsive web design’–that sites used to be essentially an interactive poster with parameters of user experience predetermined by the designer, but now our mission as designers includes framing the end-user experience (accessibility and device delivery) as part of our design–hence, responding to the user’s needs; confirmation that the lines between print and digital design are blurring, that hardly any designer is one or the other exclusively, but despite the medium, good design is good design; and that the most important design tools are passion and willingness to embrace change as our constant. Heady stuff!
But even before meeting, at our first class meeting I’d compared PBS Kids’ site to Nick Jr.’s site. For me, PBS Kids was a check in the like column. The biggest difference was the amount of motion. When you land on PBS Kids, there is an initial animation to get components on the screen, but after that, there are only two sections that continue to animate: the videos link and the games link. Nice. I know where to go. Not so with Nick Jr. There is a slideshow that changes at a slow rate next to a video window that quickly changes from show excerpts to sponsor commercials. I just can’t focus on anything and it always takes me longer than it should (IMHO) to find the show or link that I’m looking for.
Then there’s color. I heart acid green and comic book brights, and does PBS Kids ever deliver! Nick Jr., not so much. Very drab blues with some sunny oranges and yellows–not nearly as much as on their program interstices. Odd.
And finally, the links for parents. On PBS Kids, they are noticeable but quiet at the bottom–the mission is clearly to focus on enabling kids to use the tools and videos with little adult help. On Nick Jr., adult-focused content is everywhere on the landing page and my kids always ask me to help them navigate. The links are definitely big and there, but there is so much visual noise, I have trouble seeing what I need.
