Background
CBeebies is the brand used by the BBC to broadcast TV programmes and develop technology games to learn through play, aimed at children aged 6 years and younger.

Research conducted by the BBC indicated that children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are more engaged by content when they split their concentration between two screens. SpotBots is a second screen mobile application to be used while watching television and developed by the Cbeebies design team. Spotbots aims at young children aged 3 – 7 years old with ADHD. City Interaction Lab was approached by the CBeebies design team and was asked to explore how children engaged with the Spotbots prototype, and to make sure it was accessible for this audience.

The challenge
Cbeebies intended for the SpotBots prototype to be easy to use for children with ADHD. They wanted to explore how the children engaged with the prototype, the overall user experience and identify key areas of improvements.

The challenges were:

• observing and understand how the children used the Spotbots prototype in their own environment
• observing and understand how the use of Spotbots was influenced by external factors in the children own environment
• understanding and documenting any usability problems
• identifying any key areas of improvement.

The process
Contextual research was carried out to observe the children using the Spotbots prototype in their own environment and achieve the other goals of the project.

Given the specific users characteristics, the children were recruited through a recruiting agency. Information sheets and consent forms were sent to the children’s parents/carers before the research took place. We conducted the research study with six children in their own home after school time. At least one parent/carer was present at the session. Each session lasted for about 30 minutes.

During the session, we asked the children to watch the video and interact with the SpotBots mobile application. Given the young age of the user group, we didn’t set any scenarios or any specific tasks for the research study. We let the children freely interact with the Spotbots prototype and we observed them. Each session was video recorded for later analysis. At the end of the session, the children were asked questions related to the overall experience of watching the video and using the Spotbots prototype. They were all given some books and stickers as a thank you for participating to the research study.

Results
Our findings were extremely well received. They gave the CBeebies design team a comprehensive insight about their specific audience and the overall user experience while using the Spotbots application.