We ran into a big blocker when designing SpriteBox Coding, a learn-to-code game for kids ages 5+. For some kids, code was simply unapproachable.

With our previous game LightBot, we’d already proven that kids ages 5+ were capable of writing complex programs with icons. The goal for our next title was to get kids engaged and familiar with ‘real’ text programming so that they could advance to real programming languages.

Problem is, many newcomers, kids and adults alike, believe that code is inherently complex simply because it looks complex. Our first challenge became ‘How do we make code look friendly?’

Source: “Please Don’t Learn to Code” TechCrunch

We guessed that the likely culprits were the unusual symbols you see. We thought we’d succeed if we got rid of anything atypical, adopted simple vocabulary and used an interface that didn’t allow for syntax errors. We’d soon find out that this wasn’t the case. Here is what we came up with:

Textual Code in SpriteBox : Code Hour, our first try at the app

We showed the above to playtesters (kids and parents) who told us what we didn’t want to hear: the game looks complicated. The text deterred player confidence and led to confusion more than anything.

We couldn’t believe it. From our perspective, we’d simplified the code to what looks like plain English. When we asked parents what they imagined the target age group for the app to be, we got responses that estimated ages 9, 10 and up- much older than the demographic we wanted to hit.

As a test, we replaced the text with icons, and many playtesters’ initial fears dissipated. Players were more confident in approaching the game and parents estimated that the target age for the app was much lower.