Find it if you can: usability case study of search engines for young users

The Internet is an integral part of the lives of our children nowadays. Using the Internet, in particular search engines, children search for information for school, for their individual interests or simply for entertainment. Unfortunately, research shows that children face many difficulties when searching and browsing for information, even though there are several search engines that are designed especially for children. In this paper, we review recent work in this field and evaluate to what extent current search engines for children are appropriately supporting the motor and cognitive skills of elementary school-age children. We base our study on findings of previous research and derive criteria to assess existing search engines. Our results suggest that most of them still require improvements in order to fit the skills and competencies of children.