Mobile/Briefs/Kidfox

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Overview & goals

Create a kid- & parent-friendly web/tablet/phone experience, to:

  • make the web & these devices easier for kids to use
  • better meet a parent's need to control what their kids can see and do on the web & these devices

Non-goals

TBD

Who is this for?

Parents
Parents who have one or more children between the ages of 2 and 12 years who want to give their child/ren independent but safe, customizable and protected access to the Web on their phone or tablet device without having an impact on their own browser configurations, settings or browsing experience.
Kids
Kids between the ages of 2 and 12 years.

Why are we doing this?

Parents are increasingly allowing their kids use smartphones and tablets for entertainment & education, and there's a growing market for kid-friendly browsers and devices that let parents control what content their kids can see and use on the Web. As one of the leading browser vendors in the world, and given our combined focus on helping users and promoting the open web, it makes sense that we would explore the idea of creating a kid- and parent-friendly browser for phone and tablet use.

There are some kid-centric browsers and devices out there already, of course, but from our initial testing they are suboptimal in a lot of ways -- performance is bad, customization options are weak, they are often tied to a single central service for site filtering and control, or they are too locked down. There is clearly a need for a fast & responsive browser kids can love and parents can trust to give them the peace-of-mind, customization and control they want.

A kid-friendly browser could also present a number of opportunities for partnering with a wide array of service and content providers.

Inspiration

Other products

Search

Browsers

Tablets

Parental controls

User research

Articles

User stories & use cases

Parents

General use cases

  • Introducing kids to the internet
    • What would this look like for toddlers?
    • Kindergarten?
    • Grade school?
    • Tweens?
  • Helping a child learn -- reading, math, geography, history, etc.

Multi-user

  • As a parent, I want to be able to have multiple profiles supported by the kid-friendly browser, so each of my children can have their own set of bookmarks, apps, icons and such.
  • As a parent, I want it to be easy to switch which profile of the kid-friendly browser is being run, so it's not difficult to switch it from one child's configuration to another.
  • As a parent, I want it to be easy to customize each child's profile, so I can change and add things for them as needed.
  • As a parent, I want to ensure my global browser settings are protected and only essential, kid-friendly settings that affect my child's profile are surfaced.

Parental controls

  • As a parent, I want a version of Firefox that my child can use that can only surf to a set of websites known to be child-friendly, or that I have added to a whitelist, so I don't have to worry about what sites she/he is able to visit when using the device.
  • As a parent, I want to be able to use a net-filtering service [KR: some countries and/or partners will have their preferred U18 filter database that we will want to use. I am not sure parents will be educated enough to know any difference in U18 databases] that I can trust, but I also want it to be easy for me to add new things to the filter, as well as whitelist things that the net-filtering service may be blocking.
  • As a parent, I do not want my child to be able to switch apps away from the kid-friendly browser, so he/she cannot switch to another app or game. (Not sure if this is possible - else we need to preserve the ability to always be able to dial an emergency number out as per worldwide regulatory requirements)
  • As a parent, I want to set a password or code to close the kid-friendly browser, so my child can't do it themselves (either intentionally or accidentally).
  • As a parent, I want WebRTC to be disabled in the kid-friendly configuration of Firefox, so I don't have to worry about him/her getting into communications I don't know about & cannot monitor. [KR: I am not sure I agree with this one - especially if I am a mom on the road and I want to have a friendly chat with my 12-year old via WebRTC. Possibly we want to modify this so that contacts are vetted for the child's profile and no unsolicited calls / chats are allowed instead.]
  • As a parent, I want to ensure my global browser settings are protected and only essential, kid-friendly settings that affect my child's profile are surfaced.

Homescreen

  • As a parent, I want a kid-friendly and fully customizable home screen for the browser, so I can pin a specific set of websites to it that will not change.
  • As a parent, I want to set big, colourful images/icons for each pinned website on the about:home screen in the kid-friendly browser so it's easier for my child to recognize which site she/he wants and easier for them to tap the correct icons.

Marketplace

  • As a parent, I want it to be easy to find a significant number of high-quality, age-appropriate web apps & web sites for my children, so I don't have to spend a huge amount of time looking for and researching these on my own. Having access to a well-curated source of apps & sites is of immense value, particularly because children can grow bored of things so quickly.
  • As a parent, I want my children to be able to find new appropriate games, videos, apps, and books/magazines on their own -- they should have access to a kid-friendly marketplace, but not have access to other parts of the marketplace.
  • As a parent, I would like to pre-pay a set spending limit for my child for the kid-friendly marketplace, so if they want a new game or book they can go ahead and buy it, so long as it is within the pre-pay limit.

Kids

According to the Neilsen study, kids use mobile devices for:

  • Playing games (77%)
  • Education (57%)
  • Entertainment while traveling (55%)
  • Watching videos (43%)
  • Entertainment at a restaurant (41%)
  • Communication with friends/family (15%)

Use cases

  • Playing games
  • Reading/books
  • Educational apps/sites
  • Research
  • General entertainment/distraction
  • Watching videos
  • Communicating with friends & family (but not strangers)
  • Drawing/art, making videos, producing content

A lot of this stuff could be web apps.

Criteria for success

To start: two or three design concepts for a kid- & parent-friendly web/tablet/phone experience.

No limitations on what these could be, save that they involve existing mobile devices (ie: don't invent new hardware).

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