My six-year-old daughter was playing on Strudel Doodle this morning. It’s basically an online drawing application where users can submit their drawings for a prize.
So my daughter arrived at the page and clicked on “GO DOODLE!”.
Then she clicked on the redundant “START DOODLING” button on the following page.
Then she clicked on the “START DOODLING!” button on the next page.
When she was done drawing, she clicked on the “SUBMIT DOODLE” button. Doing so asked her to fill out a form.
The first question asked for her initials. At first she was going to enter her first and last initial. I told her that it doesn’t say that; it asks for her initials. She started to enter all four of her initials (she has two middle names), but it forced her to enter no more than three. She kept hitting “Shift+S” to get that last initial in and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t going in. There was no indication anywhere that the form would only accept three characters, nor was there any notification that she was entering more characters than was allowed. If I wasn’t there to tell her the problem, she wouldn’t have realised what it was. I told her to enter her first and last initials.
The rest of the form was pretty easy to use. Before she pressed the “Continue >>” button, however, she read the reminder that stated the contest is open to children 8–12. she thought that meant she couldn’t save her doodle. Despite the fact that the button had said “submit doodle” she interpreted that to mean she would save it by pressing on it. Now the reminder seemed to say she could not save it because she was not between eight and twelve.
I told her that since it allowed her to enter her birth year (1999 instead of 1997), then she should be able to press the “continue” button. When she pressed it, however, a red pop-up window came up with a warning sound and the words” Sorry! Please enter a three-letter nickname.” She had no idea why it was telling her to enter a nickname when it never asked her for one. She had no idea where to enter this nickname. I told her it was telling her she couldn’t use just her first and last initials. She needed to arbitrarily choose between her second initial and third initial. She needed to determine which of her two middle names she preferred more.
She gave up and simple pressed “Back to Doodler”.