| A usability study was conducted to determine how children navigated through the WWW, their needs, capabilities, and preferences, as well as their perception of the Web. Thirty-four children (six to nine years of age) from two elementary schools from western Puerto Rico participated in this study. User testing was the method used to study in a descriptive way how children interact with the Web and to identify the problems children might encounter while navigating through Web pages. The study demonstrated that it was easy for children to navigate the Web, and generally, they browsed through no more than four hypertext links from the starting page. Also, the children had preferences to follow image links rather than textual links. This study also showed that the use of index pages proved to be useful to the children's Web navigation. The findings formed the basis of a set of guidelines for designing pages for children. |
