How would you design a web search engine for children below 14 years old?
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- Clarifying Questions
- Education--Class 6
- Geography--Jodhpur, Rajsthan, India
- Parents/society--Both the parents are working in the private companies, they live in residential apartment in the prime location of the city
- English medium school
- They have desktop at home
- They do not have personal mobile device but they do own a family notepad/tablet
- Design a web search engine
- desktop device
- Limit in the content based on the age group
- Image specific/interactive/video based results
- Fast response time, location specific/culturally relevant examples
- User persona--Pick one
- Gamer---gaming online, play regularing
- Study --school related syllabus, courses, materials, tutorials
- Social interactive--like minded friends, activity based group,--poetry personal--future carrier
- Pain points--pick one
- i want to know future prospects for my hobby poetry
- i am looking for online groups/channels/inspiration
- current school/society curriculum and enviroment, no motivation or insipuration is visible.
- Solutions--Pick one
- find online forums
- build offline groups
- request their society or school to organize some form of activity based on these themes
- form visible on the platform, that asks specific question related to they query they have typed
- to find out exactly what they are looking for
- "online poetry school"
- form with maxium of 3 fields
- "online poetry school"
- to find out exactly what they are looking for
- Success metrics
- primary metrics
- no. of queries in day/week.mnth
- no. of successive queries typed in search bar
- Response time of search result
- no. of users filling in the form
- primary metrics
- Risks
- no. of users who does not understand the main goal behind the form--
- monetisation from the advertisers
Assumptions to be clarified with interviewer (currently I’ll take that interviewer has said yes for all of them)
- Search engine implies that information from the web is crawled, indexed & ranked so that it can be users as they browse for content, images & videos etc - similar to engines like Google/Bing
- Kids in focus have typical development (no special needs)
- Modification of existing search engine
- No resource or time constraint
There are 2 sets of stakeholders involved.
- Kids (who would be the users). Let us segment them further
o 3-5 years (Elementary)
o 6-10 years (Primary School)
o 11-14 years (Mid School)
- Parents/Guardians (taking care of kids)
For the purpose of this discussion I’d like to focus on 6- 10 years. Primary school goers will have more independence from parents to use search engine for projects, home work, fun etc. Elementary kids might be focusing on highly visual content & 11-14 years might be transitioning to standard search engine.
Let us look at the current search journey.
Kid uses device of their preference -> Kid connect to internet & reaches search engine webpage -> Selects kid profile which is linked to main parent account -> Searches for question-> Gets answer
Here are a couple of pain points that I see in this journey and I’ve also categorized them basis impact, complexity:
S.No | Pain point |
1 | Search engine UI/UX is not engaging |
2 | Do not have good spelling acumen |
3 | Do not know what other kids are searching for |
4 | Complex answers for simple topics mentioned. Issues with going though multiple links and assimilating information |
5 | Search for inappropriate content & redirection to malicious website |
6 | Excessive screen time |
Journey | S.No | Pain point |
Searches question | 1 | Search engine UI/UX is not engaging |
2 | Do not have good spelling acumen | |
3 | Do not know what other kids are searching for | |
Gets Answer | 4 | Complex answers for simple topics mentioned. Issues with going though multiple links and assimilating information |
Guardrails | 5 | Search for inappropriate content & redirection to malicious website |
6 | Excessive screen time |
Now let’s prioritize the painpoints basis severity & complexity
S.No | Pain point | Severity | Complexity |
1 | Search engine UI/UX might not be very engaging | Med | Med |
2 | Do not have good spelling/sentence creation acumen | High | High |
3 | Do not know what other kids are searching for | Low | High |
4 | Complex answers for simple topics mentioned. Issues with going though multiple links and assimilating information | High | High |
5 | Search for inappropriate content & redirection to malicious website | High | Med |
6 | Excessive screen time | High | Low |
So I will choose 2,4,5 and 6. Now I will list out solutions along with impact & effort
S.No | Pain point | Solution Category | Solution | Impact | Effort |
2 | Do not have good spelling acumen | 2 (a) Advanced Voice Assistant | -Have good AI voice assistant that can understand what kids are saying | High | High |
2 (b) Primitive voice assistant | Have primitive voice assistant that can take in words, but not high accuracy | Med | Med | ||
4 | Complex answers for simple topics mentioned. Issues with going though multiple links and assimilating information | Gen AI | -Leverage Gen AI to consolidate and share information with combination of text+image+video. Ensure the LLM takes in information from kid friendly websites and the answers are also simple for kids to understand | High | High |
Better Search | Index kid friendly websites and provide links from there uptop | Med | Med | ||
5 | Search for inappropriate content & redirection to malicious website | Parental Control | -Enable safe search | High | Med |
6 | Excessive screen time | -Have a timer that keeps informing kids how much time is left | High | Low |
I’ll prioritize Advanced AI Voice Assistant, Gen AI search and parental controls as part of my solution design.
To summarize, I tried to design search engine for kids between 6-10 years who were trying to search for information online. The vision was to have a kid friendly search engine through which kids can get range of information.
I listed out pain points and I categorized limited spelling/sentence creation acumen, complex & non-consolidated answers and limited parental guard rail as painpoints. For designing the solution I selected Advanced AI Voice Assistant, Gen AI search and parental controls as part of my design.
Search engine → It is an algorithm-based engine that crawls into publicly available information in world wide web and gives the desired result
Clarifying questions
- Am I the PM at Google → Yes
- Any resource or time constraint → No
- Any rollout plan - Will it be in phases for different geographies
- You can decide (Let me start with the assumption that Geography is India)
- Compatible on every device such as Laptops, Mobile phones, tablets etc → yes
- Can I assume that smart televisions are out of purview for this → Yes
User segment
The broad user segment is children below 14 years but we need to further bifurcate based on other parameters to understand the immediate needs and pain point to create a useful product
- 3-7 year (Initial school)
- Parent and Guardian supervision is there
- Very early phase to use the self-learning module
- 8-11 (Pre-teens)
- Got used to the technology
- Some might have access to tabs, phones etc
- 11-14 (Teenage on door)
- Maturing to use the tech products
- Secondary user segment
- Parent / Guardian / Teacher
I will create the search engine for pre-teens since their needs might have some sort of overlap with Teenage on door group. Apart from this the children are getting self-reliant to use and explore various new subjects or topics
Vision
Our vision needs to be in alignment with the Google’s vision of making the world’s information useful and universally accessible
Vision of this product
- Create a sustainable and safe product that enhances children’s curiosity and growth by sharing the useful and accessible information
Pain-points
Since we already have a search engine and we are building a new one so while listing the pain-points will keep the existing solution in mind
- Heap of information
- Subject-wise information might include PHD level stuff
- Too many listings
- Adult content
- Explicit content
- Safety
- Predators
- Finance website
- Phising etc
When we see various well defined products such as Netflix we can see the child specific modules on them.
I would like to prioritize the adult content and the safety aspect
Solutions
- Supervised guidance
- Devices such as phones, Tablet, and laptop → guardian needs to login
- Restrict access to communication website, financial website etc
- Gravitating more towards supervision – Parents/guardians getting reports of some fishy websites etc
- Access to block these website
- Effort – Medium | Impact – Medium to high
- Limited Profiling
- Cookies picks the interest
- Showcases prompt of search based on the searches
- Since children are vulnerable, full access of the advertisers is not allowed
- Eg: expensive item on Amazon, link appeared
- Effort – Medium | Impact – Medium
Metrics to measure
· Increase in logged in
· Daily active users
· Queries answered per logged in user
Q: How would you design a web search engine for children below 14 years old?
Clarifying Questions
Is there any specific purpose/place where we want to use this search engine like - limited to educational purposes/topics? Or is this a child version of google search engine? ---- Similar to google search engine, but for children
Is it for a specific geographic location? --- No
Am I designing it for any company B2B/B2C or freely available for anyone? -- Anyone
Any time and resource constraints -- No
What’s the goal of this engine? I assume since google already has a search engine and huge number of users, engagement to children would be the primary goal. -- OK
I would like to address this question by first looking at different user groups, their needs and current solutions, pain points and what can be improved, solutions and then measure success with some metrics.
To reiterate the goal -
I am a PM for Google and We want to design a freely available search engine for children below 14 years and user engagement is our primary goal.
Assumptions:
Scope - limiting to India and we can expand it once we observe customer usage and feedback
I have data and analytics available related to the current google search engine. Can reuse any data that's in google web,
User groups
By age group - Infants, Toddlers, Primary School, Secondary school
Parents/Teachers/Caretakers
I would like to pick Primary and secondary school kids for the purpose of this question, since kids are the main target group and usage of web is more likely for this group compared to others.
Customer needs and pain points -
Need - Need a easy to use web to search for information, learn new stuff and to pass time/ be entertained
Pain points -
Information overload. Kids will not be able to select the right content/site
Easy to use interface - do not overwhelm with too many options
Unsure of search words or how to land at what they need
Can be tricked easily by malicious scams and payments
Constructive usage rather than wasting time
Can get bored easily and it’s very important to keep them interested
Based on goal of improving engagement and severity of the pain point and impact I would like to prioritise 1, 4 and 6,
Solutions
Information overload. Kids will not be able to select the right content/site
Limit the number of search results and show the most relevant for kids based on the algorithm.
Create an automated teaser/Trailer for everylink/page using ML and AI. From this, the kid can decide on which one he wants to view.
Based on kids previous patterns keep modifying the suggestions and top result.
Can be tricked easily by malicious scams and payments
Create awareness in children while onboarding on how to identify potential scams
Use OTP (mobile linked to bank account/double confirmation from bank account holder to process transactions)
Restrict unsecured sites/reported pages. Have an algorithm to measure child friendly % and show only those sites.
3. Can get bored easily and it’s very important to keep them interested
a. Recommend trending in kids on home page based on child's history
B. Ask for interested categories and suggest accordingly
C. Include some sort of gamification like quiz or treasure hunt where u provide learning and at the same time increase engagement
Prioritising solutions - Based on value and effort and how efficiently the solution is solving the pain point, I will prioritise, high value and low effort ones first.
P1 - 1A, 2C and 3C.
Metrics
North Star - Time spent by children on this web
Number of children using this web
Downloads and reviews from play store and other sites
- Mission and why
- There are lots of contents and ads on search engine that are not suitable for teenagers or below.
- Teenagers are the new generation users of Internet, and they have some unique needs which differ from Adults, so the current search engine can not meet their needs.
- Before I start, something I need to clarify
- We don’t re-design the search engine architecture, so the new search engine is based on Google search engine, it is just a mode that you can shift to, and I would like to name it kids mode for convenience.
- The users are children, not including their parents.
- User segmentation
- Primary kids from 6y to 11y
- Explore something fresh to expand their knowledge about this world.
- Find something they are interested in and dig in.
- Secondary kids from 12y to 14y
- Follow the great events that happened on earth and build their own standpoints and opinions.
- Search some effective resources to help them in learning.
- Seek the solutions of their problems they met in school or family.
- Find something they are interested in and dig in.
- kids from 0y-5y are not our effective users because they are not able to use browsers.
- Top 3 pain points
- Privacy needs
- How to protect their privacy?
- Professionalism and accuracy of results
- They lack the ability to distinguish if something is true or not, the results need to be accurate and professional.
- Provide more info to expand their knowledge.
- Social needs
- Everyone can create some contents and customise the keywords that can be searched by others.
- Easy to find some social groups which are relevant to their needs
- Prioritize the pain points
Impact | Urgency | Market Size | Prioritizations | |
Privacy protection | Large | High | Large | P0 |
Provide accurate and professional results | Large | High | Medium | P0 |
Provide more info to expand some knowledge | Low | Low | Medium | P2 |
Social needs | Medium | Middle | Medium | P1 |
- Solutions
- Privacy protection
- Ok idea: traceless browsing
- Best idea: password access
- Moonshot idea: voice/face recognition access
- Provide accurate and professional results
- for example we use “Newton’s First Law of Motion” as the keyword
- Ok idea: display part of content in Wikipedia and place the website to top.
- Best idea: we design a structure to show the results base on the knowledge, from shallow to deep, and from theory to applied. For example, display Wikipedia page on top to let you know what it is, and then display some videos to learn this theory deeply, and then list some physics exam questions and answers to help you finish your homework, and then display some papers links in case you are really interested in and want to do some research. And then display some scenarios to apply this theory, to make you understand how important it is in our life.
- Moonshot idea: we build a system to let everyone has the chance to be an expert in a particular field. Every result link can be scored by anyone for professionalism and accuracy, they will decide the rank of results, the one who gets the most thumbs-up or contributed the most will display on top, along with his/her information about the school, grade, and social network account.
- Tradeoff: prioritize the solutions
Effectiveness | Engineering Complexity | Implementation Adoption | Prioritizations | |
Privacy protection | ||||
traceless browsing | High | Easy | Low | |
password access | High | Easy | High | ✅ |
voice/face recognition access | High | Hard | Middle | |
Provide accurate and professional results | ||||
Display Wikipedia content on top | Low | Easy | Low | |
New structure to display results from shallow to deep, from theory to apply | High | Medium | High | ✅ |
A system with professionalism and accuracy score function | Middle | Hard | Medium |
Step 1: Ask clarifying questions to narrow down the scope of the question/product?
-What's the main purpose for which the children below 14 years old will be using the search engine for? (For education purposes only)
-Is the search engine available for particular regions only or not? (To begin with it'll be available for users in NY only)
-Are we building a stand-alone product or are we planning to integrate it with an already existing product? (Stand-alone product)
-Is the web search engine free or paid? (Free)
-What kind of information can be searched using/on the web-search engine? (Videos, images, text)
-Do the users need an email account or signup to create an account before they can use the search engine? (No)
-For mobile or Desktop/PC? (mobile only)
-Android or iOS (both)
Step 2: List down the user groups
Now we will list down the user groups based on their usage capacity:
-Children who use the search engine daily to study and read about new educational concepts and also to solve/get their homework done
-Children who use search engine seldomly for education and homework related purposes (maybe like once or twice a week)
-Parents of children who use the search engine to teach the education related concept to their kids
-School teachers who use it to setup the assignments, exams question papers etc.
Step 3: Select one user group and state your reason for the same.
For the scope of this question we will be going with the first mentioned user group i.e Children who use the search engine daily to study, read about new educational concepts and also to get their homework done.
As these are the people who will be using the app the most and thus be able to derive maximum value out of it. Hence we will go for this user group.
Step 4: List down the user pain-points
1) Many times they don't know what they are looking for?
2) Not getting exact answers to their questions?
3) Want to know or keep track of what their friends are searching for
4) Typical search experience is very time consuming and non-interactive
5) Results are at times hard to understand
Step 5: Prioritise the user pain-points based on criterias like : Impact to end user, Impact to business value.
Pain Point # | Impact to end user | Impact to business value |
1 | H | H |
2 | M/H | H |
3 | M | L |
4 | H | H |
5 | H | H |
Based on the above criterias we have prioritised pain-points 1,2,4 and 5
Step 6: List down the solutions for the prioritised pain-points
1) Many times they don't know what they are looking for?
A) AI based recommendation feature: It will recommend children topics that they might like based on their previous search history, area of interests etc
B) Friend feature: This will recommend the users the latest and most popular topics based on what their friends are searching and reading about
2) Not getting exact answers to their questions?
A) NLP based Doubt solver feature: Children can take a picture and upload their questions and doubts directly on this platform where it can be solved.
4) Typical search experience is very time consuming and non-interactive
A) Voice based search: Children no longer have to be worried about typing the entire doubt, topic or concept they wanted to know about
B) Search for images/videos directly: As opposed to text based search children can search for images and videos directly for more interactive experience
C) Autosuggest/Auto complete feature: To simplify their searching experience
5) Search results are at times hard to understand
A )Search results displayed in the form of infographics, memes, wordcloud and images rather than being text based.
Step 7: Prioritise the solutions based on criterias like Impact to end user, implementation effort, cost of implementation etc
Solution # | Impact to end user | Implementation effort | Implementation cost |
1 A | H | M | M |
1 B | M/H | M | L |
2 A | M/H | M | M |
4 A | H | L/M | L |
4 B | H | M | M |
4 C | H | L/M | L |
5 A | M/H | L/M | L |
Based on the above criterias we have prioritised the following solutions
4A,4C,5A
Step 8: List down the metrics that you'll track for the above features
4A: Voice based search: Children no longer have to be worried about typing the entire doubt, topic or concept they wanted to know about
1) % of total users that use this feature on a daily, weekly and monthly basis
2) Avg number of users that are using this feature as their made main mode of search
4C: Autosuggest/Auto-complete feature: To simplify their searching experience
1) Avg dec in search time after the launch of this feature
5A: Search results displayed in the form of infographics, memes, wordcloud and images rather than being only text based.
1) % Increase in user/customer satsifaction after the launch of this feature
Step 9: Summarize your answer
Ok so we want to design a web serch engine such as a google.com but not a browser. Correct?
Interviewer: yes.
Me: And this would be the first of it's kind? Also can we assume it's a new start-up company and hence this would be their first product?
Interviewer: as you wish.
Me: ok, considering that, I think what's critical to the company is obtaining customers because that's how they are going to get revenue.
Considering that this would be for kids, advertisments could be quite challenging because kids will click on anything flashy and that may lead to exposing kids to unfiltered content, enraging their parents our real customers, and also could lead to viruses. So this being the case, is it safe to assume that there would be a nominal fee to use this engine? Parents, our customers, would actually gladly pay for it.
Interviewer: Sure. So you want to focus on monetization or customer adoption?
Me: Well kinda both but that monetization depends on customer adoption. But adoption can only happen if once the user is gained I can keep the user engaged. So let's prioritize keeping the user engaged.
Me: You mentioned kids 14 and under. Are we looking at normal kids (girl or guy) or kids with some sort of disability (such as deaf)? I will go with normal kids if that's ok.
Interviewr: let's get to it.
Me: Ok I would like to take approach that I take at work as a PM. I think about who my user is going to be because that helps me think through the user journey. I may play that in my head here to save on time but can certainly walk you through it if needed. This will help me think of user needs and define some solutions. Is this ok?
Interviewer: Sure.
Me: Give me few min to think. I am usally not good at explaining things as I write so will prob write first and then walk you through. oh, I will solve this for
Me:
Needs:
1) Need to know what words mean and being able to find synonyms
2) Want to get my homework done fast without having to surf around much
3) Want to play games and chat with my friends
4) Want to compete with my firends and be better than them.
Give me a min please. I am trying to think what needs would be more beneficial to focus on.
It's not necessary that every kid is competitive but still have primary needs of socializing, playing games and to do that they know they need to compelete their homework fast. So let's prioritize 1-3.
Interviwer: yes, sounds fine.
Me: I will likely evaluate as I go along but will jot things down first. My evaluation is prob going to be Feasibility, Complexity and Value Add rated from 1-5, 1 being low and 5 being high. In real life though evaluation is more complicated since you have to consider tech capability, resource availability, key customer needs, etc.
1a) Triple clicking on a word brings up meanings and suggested synonyms as a pop-up. (F5,C3,V5)
2a) Suggest what to read based on what others are reading around the same topic. (F5,C4,V5)
2b) Use AI to suggest what keywords could result in better results. This may require tracking other users looking for similar stuff who received results they spent more time on. Google already ranks web pages based on how much time is spent on a single page. So this is certainly possible. (F5, C4,V5)
2c) Enabling building a community of other kids in the same age group, from the same school district or even the same school to exhange ideas with. Collaboration can be amazing but there will be downsides to getting your homework done without muc hof your own efforts. (F5,C1,V5)
3a) Kids safe games in various classifications such as just for fun / entertainment, educational, improving social skills, etc. (F5,C1,V5)
Considering user is a kid, kid's needs, and feasibility and complexity, I think I would like to prioritize in the order: 1a, 2a, 2b, 2c, 3a. I prioritized 2c to be the second last since though it's a really neat feature and definitely extremely value add, the other features are going to be critical for the customer (parent) to be willing to pay for the browser. Also, while playing and fun is important, parents aren't looking at that as much since the kid has plenty other games and stuff to use + there are other gaming sites that the parents have prob already allowed their child to use. So these 2 features aren't the key ones that will make a sale.
Overall, I think we need to focus on AI capabilities that would help the kid in easing their effort on reserach, homework and teamwork.
To clarify, we would like to design a web search engine for children below 14 years old. They want to search and find content that is relevant for them using the search engine. Currently, search engines provide general content and is not specific to a specific age. This helps the children get the content they need and want in a timely manner. The goal of this engine is to provide the relevant information quicker for the age group specified.
The user groups we can look at are:
Children ages 14 and under subdividing them into age groups of 3 – 6, 7 -10, 10 – 14.
Parents so that they can reflect back on what their children is looking at
Teachers that can upload relevant content for the kids
I will focus on the children themselves ages 10 – 14 specifically as by that time, they don’t need as much support using the computer and know how to find what they need and are gaining independence from their parents. And so the impact and frequency of usage would probably be higher.
User needs:
1. Access to content related to their studies at school to help them with their studies
2. Access to content that is fun for them to learn more and find what interests them
3. Ways to share and communicate with friends and engage with content
4. Accessibility
5. Ways to express themselves and their needs more fluidly
6. Ways to understand the content and digest it easier
| Frequency of problem | Impact | Value | effort |
Access to content for studies | High | High | High | Medium |
Access to content for fun | High | High | High | Medium |
Ways to share , communicate and engage with friends
| High | High | High | medium |
Accessibility
| Low | High | Medium | Medium |
Express their needs easier | Medium | Medium | Medium | High |
Understand content and digest it | High | High | High | Medium |
I will focus on points 1, 2, 3 & 6
Solutions:
1. Insert age / school / location and filter content / results
2. A way to comment on school related content to share ideas
3. Develop AI suggested content based on profile
4. Drop down menu to pre categorize content
5. Synonyms when highlighting words
6. Initial search results in video and images
7. Sharing button
| Frequency of usage | Impact | Value | effort |
Insert age / school / location and filter content | High | High | High | Medium |
Comment on school | High | High | High | High |
Develop AI suggested content | High | High | High | High |
Synonyms highlighting words in results | High | High | High | Medium |
Sharing button | High | High | High | medium |
Initial search results in video and images | High | High | High | Low |
Based on the above, I would focus on what drives high frequency of usage, impact and value with low or medium effort. So that would be 1. the filtering ability, 4. synonyms for highlighting words, 5. sharing button & 6. search results in images and video
In summary, we are trying to develop a way for children 10 -14 to access content that is school and fun related in a way that feels connected to their community and in a way that is easier to digest and understand.
To answer the same, first let us understand the question and product requirements a little better.
Is it a search engine for Kids of all ages below14 years or some specific range ?
Is it meant to be used by kids with some disability( either physical or sight)?
Are there any Language we may launch first in the MVP?
So, lets consider the below use case:
A Search Engine for kids with no disability of all ages below 14 years searching in the English Language.
Now, what is the Problem we are trying to solve here?
A kid below 14 years may not be able to find relevant information in a normal search engine as it is not specifically designed for him in both design and algorithms.
Who will use this new product if we design it?
Kids for sure. But so will their parents, teachers and siblings/friends( all of them being more than 14 year olds).
Now let's think of the solution.
There are two main aspects to the solution: Design and Algorithm.
First, let's take design.
The Home Page design needs to be different than any other search engine. It should appeal to the kids( Primary TG). Every kid has his favorite subject like Science, Maths, History etc. The Search should have the option of Themes on the subjects. Default Theme should be a combination of all subjects and images etc.
A normal search has categories like News, Maps, Images etc. This can be part of the Roadmap to give all funcinalities of traditional search engine, albeit with relevane to primary TG.
However, to start with, we will have categories a kid is most likely to search about- Science, Geography, History, Sports, Mathematics etc.
It should have the option of a voice based search. The Personal Assistant should be trained to correctly identify the kids voice modulations.
The SERP should have less advertisements and less clutter than a normal SERP.
The design should be responsive to adjust to different devices and platforms.
Now, coming over to the Search Algorithm.
The Ranking Algo needs to be different than a normal search algo.
It should show results which are more relevant to Kids. So, if i am searching for the Pythagoras Theorem, a wikipedia page might not necessarliy my top ranked page. It could be a page that explains the theorem in a more interactive way using Videos and animation etc. Showing EduTech content will increase our relevance, engagement and monetisation.
The Algo should be able to filter out ALL websites that have any explicit or implicit content that is sexually motivated.
How to measure the success of the Search Engine?
1. Number of New Users and their growth
2. Number of Active users and their growth
3. Number of Searches per day per user
4. Time per day per user
5. Number of Ads clicked On, ARPU per User
6. Number of Marketers
7. Drop Off/Bounce rate( this could signal something wroing with the algo)
Also, the product which is designed keeping in view the primary TG should also give the other users(parents, teachers , siblings etc.) the right to following:
1. Block websites
2. Block search query terms
3. Limit time on the search engine
4. Monitor Search history and send to them over email/whatsapp( search history should be non deletable by Primary TG).
So to sum it up, we will design the page and algo keeping in mind our primary TG- kids below 14 years old. We will have parental and safety control features in the search engine.
Preliminary questions
- Search engines search things online right? (just to clarify)
- You said children below 14, is there a more specific category that I should focus (I assumed 10-14)
- Academic purposes
- Projects & Homeworks
- Clearing doubts(Most important)
- Entertainment
- Favorite cartoon
- Music album
- Input what the user is looking for
- Get the most relevant results
- Should be able to read and understand it
- Voice input
- Browse through categories(Eg- Grade-->Subject-->Topic-->Chapter)
USER NEED 2-Get the most relevant results
- Suggest what others in the same groups are reading
- suggestions made by educators (Like the teacher of that grade
USER NEED 3-Read and understand
- Simple language in the content and more images and videos
- Relate the content to cartoon characters or games etc.
Follow these 12 steps roughly.
1) Clarify functionality of search engine
~ Ask questions about what specific are concerns of children under 14 yrs. Is it pornography, etc?
~ Ask if it should be an app or browser page that is the primary use case.
~ Ask where it would be launched: country
~ Do parents want full control of what content is shown to kids & hours.
2) Clarify exact segment & question
~ Ask which age group we should target 1 to 3, 2 to 5, 5 to 8, 8 to 13, etc. This is important so that the content can be tailored accordingly
~ Also, this impacts the exact interface. For kids around age 3, the interface would pretty much be a touch interface with pictures. For kids around 8, it could be a mix. Also, for kids around 12 to 14, we could assume they would have a mobile phone perhaps.
~ Are kids using this search engine for entertainment or for education or both.
~ Do parents want full control of what content is shown to kids & hours?
3) Define target user Persona
~ Jim from Austin, TX
~ Kid age 2.5
~ Lives at home with parents
~ Gone to PRESCHOOL most of the day
~ Has access to iPad
~ Interests: Cartoons, Numbers, Alphabets, Cars
4) Map user journey
~ Depending on the age group chosen. Say 2 to 5, we should map the journey for an IPad based mobile search engine app.
~ User opens iPad for image based search app
~ User opens app and is immediately presented with an option to browse specific categories of content: Science, Math, Cartoons, etc.
~ User browses content via images & arrives at the content they want to see
5) Identify Metrics that should matter
~ Number of times children use app to search relevant content.
~ D/M/Y usage in terms of:
>>> Tapped icons
>>> Viewed/read content
>>> Rating in app store
>>> User feedback in app store
6) Identify use cases & pain points
~ Kids want clickable categories. Current solutions don’t do that.
~ Parents want pornography, stalkers & other bad elements removed like chatrooms. Current platforms are geared for people of all age.
~ Parents should be able to control the hours. Current solutions are not geared towards parents’ controls.
7) Identify solutions
~ Create category based image search engine so that kids can navigate by clicking
~ Create parents dashboard so that kids’ access can be controlled
~ Ensure filters can be applied in terms of what content is available in this search engine
~ Recommendation engine based on past browsing history
8) Prioritize Solutions
Prioritize based on cost, ROI & time to build after MVP has been defined.
The baseline MVP would have to to build the content & categories first so that user feedback can be collected about that functionality. So we would prioritize like this:
1~ Create category based image search engine so that kids can navigate by clicking
2~ Ensure filters can be applied in terms of what content is available in this search engine
The remaining solutions would fall beyond the MVP. Therefore these would be evaluated against ROI, Cost & time to build.
3~ The parents dashboard : Low cost, ROI high say 10%, time to build = 2 months
4~ Recommendation engine – High cost, ROI high say 10%, time to build = 6 months
9) Validate
~ Design some wireframes, prototypes share with target children segment
~ Get feedback to improve designs
10) Iterate
~ Build updated designs
~ Arrive at final design
~ Build actual solution after design has been throughly vetted via wireframes, mockups, etc.
11) Launch & Measure
~ Launch to smaller audience
~ Validate their experience in production
~ Start tracking key metrics & get their early feedback
~ Incrementally launch to a larger audience OR start building the 2nd half of the solution for parents dashboard and then incrementally launch.
12) Do post-launch followup to keep an eye on key metrics
~ Keep an eye on metrics over time.
Going to assume that this search engine will be for all types (websites, videos, images..). Also going to make the assumption that users will use this on mobile and desktop.
Users:
1) Children looking to get help/do research for homework
2) Younger children looking to find videos of their favorite cartoons / superheroes
3) Children looking to find music videos of their favorite bands
4) parents
for the purposes of this answer, I’ll assume the target customers are the children trying to do research for their homework.
Use-cases:
1) Search the web to learn more about a particular topic
2) Search for the answer to a particular academic question
3) Search the web to get tutorials on a particular topic
4) Search the web for images and videos that they can use for their presentation
5) Get help in knowing which is the best source of truth for an answer
6) Get help in deciding which sources can be cited on a paper
7) Get answers instantly, and from anywhere
Painpoint: Overwhelmed with the amount of information provided
Prioritization by customer benefit and complexity:
highest: search for the answer to a particular academic question, get answers instantly from anywhere
Solutions:
1) Search engine app / site that provides answers to academic questions directly by tapping into knowledge graph (like Wolfram Alpha, but for a wider variety of topics).
Pros: children save time to get answer, can click links to learn more if they need to
Cons: Huge upfront cost to integrate wolfram alpha like capabilities
2) Search engine app/site that prioritizes searching in websites that are known to be relevant to children’s education – Quora, educational blogs..
Pros: Links and mentions in “recommend” websites get higher weight, which means more relevant material is surfaced;
Cons: redoing of the search algorithm
3) Search engine app / site that has no ads – perhaps subscription supported to NOT influence anything but the top result, get the resourcing to optimize results for children, hide inappropriate ads / content
Pros: Keep children focused on their search and hide explicit/inappropriate content
Cons: Not sure if this would work from a business viability standpoint when users are used to search engines being free
Prioritization by customer benefit and cost: #1 (search engine that provides more answers upfront to academic questions)
To further understand the I would want to ask few clarifying questions
1. When we say web search engine, are we referring to something like Google search/Bing? I will assume the answer to be yes.
2. On what platform are we going to build the search engine? Mobile/Desktop/Tablet? I will park this question for now and will address while understanding our target group.
3. We have mentioned that search engine should be for children below 14 years of age. Do we have any specific range, or we will be addressing the requirements of all age groups below 14? For now, I will assume 10 – 14 years.
Now I would like to understand what problem are we trying to solve, what will differentiate our product with that of existing products in market? I will assume that current product is not that user friendly for our target group and does not specifically cater to their needs.
Now I would like to know for whom we are building the product for:
1. Children in age group of 10 -14 years, I will assume they can use existing product (Google/Bing search engine) in the market. The understanding and knowledge level of will vary, I will assume our target group is a regular school going kid who understands basic level of English.
2. Parents who would use the search engine to find information related to kid’s education, their career
3. Teachers who would like to use search engine to teach kids and may be also give reference from search results
Now I will try to address my previous question of platform, since smartphone penetration has increased tremendously I will design the web search for Mobile.
After I have understood who our users will be, I will try to understand their behavior and needs in depth
1. Children in age group of 10 -14 years
a. Current product in the market assumes that person has basic comprehending capability, but children in age of 10-14 years are still in basic schooling phase. Hence, they lack ability to go through several results and decide which ones are the most suitable.
b. They might not clearly articulate what they are looking for
c. Short attention/focus duration
d. Visual content is more appealing
e. Susceptible to hacking
2. Parents
a. Would not want their kids to waste too much time on it
b. Want to ensure that there is no malicious content displayed
c. If possible, monitor the activity of kid on search engine
3. Teachers
a. Would want to recommend few links to their students/parents
b. Would want to search for latest development on the topic going on in class
Now that we have understood the needs to our users, I would like to list down our product features, for this I will try to come up with basic features based on above needs and prioritize the features
Basic Features
1. Use profile (age, country, city, school, interests) of user to return more relevant results
2. Recommendations from teachers and friends shown first
3. Video, image recommendations on top
4. An AI mechanism to understand the intent of the search instead of matching the words for searching
5. When hovering mouse over the link summary of the article to be explained – It can be either in form of text or voice
6. A feature to have one permanent and one dynamic/adhoc password
7. A dashboard showing the category of searches, time spent on searches
8. This can be further enhanced to see what other kids in the same age group are searching which can help parents/teachers/(kids themselves) in assessing their kids and taking any action
9. A separate tab listing down latest development/history/Basic information/Intermediate/advanced level
Prioritizing the features
1. Basic feature
2. Differentiating
3. Easily achievable
4. Complex/High cost
5. Complex/High cost
6. Easy, Low cost
7. Easy, Low cost
8. Medium complexity, low cost, high return can be made a paid feature as well
9. Medium complexity, low cost, high return can be made a paid feature as well
Hence,
Priority 1 – Features – 1,2 ,3 ,6,7,8,9
Priority 1 – Features – 4
Priority 1 – Features – 5
Summary
We will build a mobile search engine for children in the age group of 10-14 years which will allow use demographics, recommendations from teachers to show video and image results on top. A dashboard will be generated showing frequent searches and generated useful insights to identify areas of improvement. In addition, there will be tabs which would further classify the results retrieved into basic/intermediate/advanced/latest development.
Is this search engine general purpose, or geared towards jobs, or hobbies?
What country are we building this search engine for?
I’ll assume we’re building a general purpose search engine with the goal of providing children 14 and under the same capabilities of a search engine that a person from any other age group might use but tailored to the needs of this specific age group. I’ll also assume these users know how to use a computer since they wouldn’t need to use a search engine if they didn’t know how to use a computer.
Now, I’d like to identify and discuss the users that might be using this search engine.
1. Children 14 and under
This is the main group we’d be building the engine for. Children in this age range have
-varying degrees of internet awareness
-different education levels (reading vs writing) and typing ability
-are mostly interested in games and social activities
-are vulnerable to attacks by hackers
2. Parents
-Usually when children 14 and under have access to a computer, their parents have given them this access
-This user group cares about the safety of their children
-They don’t spend as much time doing the same activities on the search engine as their children do
I think we should focus on the children users for now. With that being said, I’d like to report on some of those use cases.
Children under 14
1. Search for and discover content
2. View and understand results for the content they search for so they can quickly get to what they’re looking for
3. Will want to know what their friends are up to so they’ll have shared experiences
Not that I’ve reported on some requirements, I’d like to discuss some possible solutions.
Children under 14
User Experience
1.
a) Word cloud search: this would show words, and concepts that other children are searching for and allow kids to click on them. This way kids can a) discover popular content and be in the know b) easily click to initiate a search without needing to type in anything
b) Topic search: this is similar to the first idea, but instead of individual words, kids would only see curated topics like (sports games, puzzle games, disney channel stars) and they’ll be able to go a few levels deep to get more specific for each category. This takes the guess work out and allows children to get to content that they care about quickly.
c) Visual auto complete: this would allow children to see actual images of the things that they are typing in once the fetcher gets to a certain level of confidence. When this happens the children can click on an item, and the search engine will complete the search. This will help make children aware of what they are doing and make it easier to execute a search.
2.
a) Visual results: this would ditch the common way we show results today (links and text) in favor of showing previews of the actual websites. This allows children to quickly identify what site they want to visit without needing to read lengthy descriptions.
b) Smart assistant in results: this would be a quick snippet of text for every returned result that would give the child a high level explanation of what they can do on the site before they click it
3.
a) Connect social: this would allow children to connect their social accounts of choice and give them the ability to see sites that their friends have visited on the default search page, but would require opting into the ability.
Search Engine Tech
4.
a)Crawler filter: this search engine should only be crawling sites that are age appropriate. One way this can be done is from the information itself, another way is from looking at the demographics of the users that go to the site itself. It’ll need to ignore any domain that doesn’t fit the children under 14 demographic or that has content that is inappropriate or may be abusive
I think that’s a good list of features. Let’s spend some time prioritizing them based on impact to cost ratio.
1a) Quick Win: High Impact, Low Cost. It’s fairly easy to keep a counter for queries per word, and showing these queries up front would provide a lot value for children.
1b) Must Have: High Impact, High Cost: Relative to the item before this feature would require some more processing to our data set to be able to surface up the right content, and provide further levels of granularity.
1c) Money Pit: Low Impact, High Cost. I think since children are already typing and have somewhat of an idea this won’t provide as much value, and it may be expensive to not only get the images, but be able to surface the right image for each word.
2a) Quick Win: High Impact, Low Cost. I think since most websites are cached it’d be pretty easy to show website previews for what users have searched for, and to make this the primary showing for the results would also be easy put together but make it really easy for children to consume.
3a) Money Pit: Low Impact, High Cost. I think showing a users friends activities could be compelling but we can assume that when we generalize behavior for an age group the behavior is similar so this may not add too much value and be costly.
4a) Must Have: High Impact, High Cost. This is absolutely necessary to power the experience users will see. The technology exists.
Some tradeoffs with these features include:
-not all children can see or are visual so we’d need accessibility affordances in the future
-the curated categories may not be what children want
To summarize, we want to build a search engine for children 14 and under with the goal of making an experience that meets their needs, and allows them to quickly and easily find content. We can do this by including the features 1a, 2a, 1b, and 4a in our MVP.
This is my first answer on the platform, would love to hear feedback on the same.
- Some questions:
1. Are we catering to all the kids below 14 years or there is some age bracket we will be catering to. Let’s assume it’s: 9 -14 years
2. Which platform to cater this browser – app and web both
3. Are we focusing globally for this browser – Let’s assume answer is yes.
- Let’s understand the problem we are trying the solve here:
1. Save the kids from malicious content which might not be age appropriate.
2. Save kids from hackers as they are more prone to the same.
3. Parents to keep a check on what their kids are doing – they are using a safe browser or not.
4. Content which is easy to understand for kids of this age group.
- Let’s understand the behaviour of two groups here one is the parent and other is kids.
1. Kids is this are mostly school going and knows how to type, use basic smartphone feature, use English as mode of communication.
2. Short attention span is there.
3. Too much text heavy search results will wont work as kids like to understand through infographics, clips, pictures etc.
4. More into games
5. High on energy – same energy might get converted into aggression if not channelized properly.
6. As for parents – concerned about malicious and inappropriate content their kids might get exposed to.
7. Too much screen time not good for their eyes and continuous sitting impacts the posture of the body.
8. Connecting and talking to strangers on internet at this age is another issues parent want to solve.
- Now let’s try to solve and list down features of the product after understanding the user behaviour and needs:
1. Basic profile creation – including the parents’ details
2. Search engine optimized to show more pictures and less text for better understanding and to gauge the interest of the kids.
3. Chat bot assistance – to help the kid with curious questions by just typing in the bot.
4. Key word assistance and focused search – to help kid get the right and accurate search results.
5. Additionally, we can provide – connecting with friends through the social browser which will remove the possibility of connecting with the strangers over the internet.
6. Gamification of search and rewards integration to hook the kids’ interest can be done.
7. Browser to understand the interest – when opening the browser first time by asking the kid which are the area of interest. Basis which we can share content related to that also every day.
8. For parents – parental control system will be provided which can monitor the screen time and detailed history.
- Prioritization:
Sr.no | Feature | Impact | Effort |
1 | Basic details | High | Low |
2 | SEO for images and clips | High | High |
3 | Chat bot | Medium | High |
4 | Browser connect – with friends | Medium | Medium |
5 | Parental control | High | Low |
Summary – In the first phase, we will be developing a search engine for kids targeting age: 10 to 14 years. With profile creation, optimized search, connect with friends and parental control feature.
In the second phase we can focus on AI chat bot and other optimizations like AR/VR space and gamification of search and addition of rewards to problem solving like stuff.
- Children of power users (Power users are someone who searches at least 10 times a day)
- Children of occasional users (Occasional users are someone who searches 5-10 times a day)
- Children of non-occasional users (Non-occasional users are someone who searches less than 5 queries a day)
Journey | Pain Point | Severity |
Ask a query - Child | e.g. a math question They don't know how to frame the question to get the best answer | S (This is something that they currently ask the teacher. This can continue) |
They get an answer but they don't get the full conceptual clarity | S (This is something that they currently ask the teacher. This can continue) | |
Explore More - Child | e.g. I want to learn more about the solar system | |
I get information from Wikipedia, but is that the correct information and is that ordered in the right way? It is confusing | L (This is an issue worth solving for) | |
Parents | How do I control what my child watches | L (This is an important pain point for a parent) |
My kid spends too much time on the screen. | L (This is important as there are adverse effects of too much screen time also) |
- It is difficult to get structured information online for curious children
- Parental controls for search for kids
Pain Point | Solution | Priority | Engineering Complexity |
It is difficult to get structured information online for curious children | Currently, search focusses more on Wikipedia. Try to show more content from Ivy Leagues or Teachers who have YouTube channels. Try to recommend those to the learner | L (This is something that can drive more users to Google Search and then YouTube kids where you have specific topics for curious kids) | S (YouTube and Google Search can be leveraged) |
Curate a playlist so that there is a logical beginning and end to the learning | L (This will give a logical beginning and end to the entire search experience) | M (Playlists already exist but they are built by the creators. We can have a model that will build out a playlist for the kids. We will also need someone to manually review the first set of playlists) | |
Have AMA sessions with faculty and students to clarify any doubts they may have from the video | S (Any doubts they can ask the teacher as they currently do) | S (Building this is not too difficult) | |
Leverage Gemini to clear doubts they may have from the learnings | S (Doubts can be cleared by the teacher also, so we can deprioritise this) | S (Building this based off of Gemini's APIs should not be too difficult) | |
Parental controls | Allow parents to set up a start time before which children will not be allowed to search online | M (This is something that is good but exact times may not work because different days have different schedules) | M (Setting up parental controls is fairly straightforward and it involves taking the server time and telling the kids that they can check back after some time) |
Allow parents to set up duration of watch time | L (This will help in controlling the screen time of the kid) | M (Setting up parental controls is fairly straightforward and it involves taking the server time and telling the kids that they can check back after some time) | |
What kind of content can be shown is also something that can be given by the parent. | M (Most times, the parents are also don't know what is ok. What is definitely not ok is already part of public policy in a lot of countries) | L(While parental controls are already built in to things like YouTube, we will have to apply those to general searches. We will also have to look at ads as different regions have different approaches to showing ads to kids) |
- Avg no. of searches by child
- No. of repeat visitors
- Frequency of searches per child
- It is difficult to get structured information online for curious children
- Parental controls for search for kids
- Try to show more content from Ivy Leagues or Teachers who have YouTube channels. Try to recommend those to the learner
- Curate a playlist so that there is a logical beginning and end to the learning
- Allow parents to set up duration of watch time
- Avg no. of searches by child
- No. of repeat visitors
- Frequency of searches per child
I am assuming this is for children between 5 to 14 years old as children should learn to read write and speak properly.
Is this for any specific region (as kids especially below 10 years of age might be very comfortable in their native language but not in non-native languages such as English)? à let’s assume US for now
Is it about designing a new search engine altogether or modifying the existing one? à Designing a new web search engine
Is this web search engine for personal use or for by educational institutions? à personal use
Has there been any market research or user study that I should be aware of? à None
Are there any budgetary or time constraints? à None
I will structure the answer by first discussing the business goal of such a product, look at the pain points and prioritize them. Then I will brainstorm a few solutions and evaluate how we can go about solving the issue.
In addition to useful information, there is a lot of negative harmful content as well across the web. Negative can mean misinformation, obscenity, hatred towards certain communities. With respect to kids, negative can also mean something which is not age appropriate. Exposure to such negative information can hamper the growth and development of kids. Since internet is so easily available to kids in the age group of 5-14 years that parents are constantly worried of kids being exposed to such negative information. At the same time, internet gives kids access to a wealth of information to help build their knowledge and learn. So, the mission of such a product can be as simple as “Forget the worries of negativity and complement your kid’s development with a specially designed search engine”.
Parents want their kids to learn in a positive environment. Similarly, kids want to learn and have fun and entertainment while learning.
Pain Points from both kids and parents’ perspectives:
Parents -
- Worried of excessive exposure to internet – P2
- Worried of exposure to harmful content on internet – P0
- Unable to keep an eye on what their children are exactly searching for and learning – P1
- Worried that their children will not share if they have been exposed to some harmful content, and in turn may suffer – P0
- Worried that without elder supervision, kids wont be able to understand what’s right and wrong in the content or establish its authenticity – P0
- Want their children to learn and develop – P1
Kids -
- Want to learn in a fun and interactive way – P1
- Want to learn without parent supervision – P1
- Want to also see what my friends are searching and learning – P2
The above pain points have been prioritized as P0, P1 and P2, taking into consideration the severity, frequency and the users' goals. The ones directly related to the “harmful” aspect of internet access to kids and knowing what’s right and wrong having been marked as P0. The ones related to learning and development have been marked as P1. The other generic ones have been marked as P2.
Now, lets brainstorm a few solutions:
- The web search engine would require a sign up by a parent to decide what type of categories of questions to be answered and not to be answered by the search engine when queried by their kids (optional) and a sign up by the kid for them to access just the search engine and no other parent specific pages of the application
- The underlying algorithm of the search engine will already be trained on age-appropriate content i.e., content across the web which is harmful for kids. So as new content gets added to the web, the underlying algorithm will filter them out before showing search results.
- The search engine can show a summary to answer the question asked by the kid in a more children friendly language, followed by search results.
- Whenever a kid asks/types a query, the search engine can show a good mix of textual results, images, videos, and links (with snippets) of fun/interactive games which can help them learn.
- The search engine should be able to take in input through text, voice as well as images as kids in the range of 6-10 years might tend to show objects to know about them.
- The parent should be able to sign into the account and see a summary of queries asked by their children. The dashboard can show the kids’ queries which could have led to being exposed to harmful content. The parent can also flag any item which was shown to the kids as harmful and that can be considered by the underlying algorithm.
- The search engine should not show any advertisements. The company can earn revenue through a monthly or annual subscription model.
In the initial launch, the solutions 1 and 2 can be implemented as they directly address the pain points or concerns of P0 and is in alignment with the business goal.
In the next release, the solution 6 (addressing P1 concerns of parents), along with solution 3 (with Gen AI summarization capabilities, it should not be very difficult to build) can be implemented.
Followed by solutions 4 and 5.
Concerns regarding the above solutions -
- Kids, especially children above 10 years of age might feel very stifled as their history of queries asked would be accessible to parents.
- The suggestions from parents on what’s harmful needs to be properly weighed as opinions differ across communities widely.
Clarify -
- What is the purpose of the search engine? - to help in education/entertainment like videos, comics/to help acquire new skills/something else?
- What’s the objective? - Revenue generation/market expansion?
- For what kind of children? - Children with some disabilities/smart kids/children who has very little knowledge of tech?
- Where? Where do we want to launch this search engine?
Assumptions -
Build a search engine to help children to improve their learning experience - they want to learn new subjects, new skills, language, history, geography, poems, bicycle, etc.
The objective is that we see potential growth in this market segment and hence we want to design a product for them
For normal children who are capable of using a search engine
Let’s say Indian demography
User Segments -
Kids are technologically sound - techie kids - easily understand new tech
Naive kids - kids who need some time to learn
Pain Points and Needs -
Kids are bored easily - whenever they are reading something, they get bored and distracted easily
Kids want information in the shortest and sweetest way possible. They don’t want to read big articles/blogs/magazines, etc.
Kids usually love games - any sort of games - which give them rewards - they want satisfaction
Important to give the kids an idea about how much time it will take for them to learn a particular topic/subject
Kids want to see things that resonate with their mind/behaviour
Design idea -
Google for kids -
Explore fun educational articles, learn new skills and gain knowledge by learning how things work in the real world
Features -
We can create some gamification effect to push the kids upwards. For example, create badges - silver, gold, platinum based on the number of articles they have read/questions they have solved. Allow kids to compete with each other
The article recommendations of this search engine should be short and crisp - no fillers/no BS
Install small educational playables games on the home page of the search engine - teach them stories about great historians using games - for example, world war II or I can be easily explained via games
Show the estimated time that’s needed to reach a particular piece of content - For ex, 20 mins to reach till the end - keep them motivating by keeping a timer on the side
The home page should be customizable according to the needs of the want - some kid may be passionate about aeroplanes, ships, or some may geography, a particular movie character, etc.
Alternate design -
Why to keep a physical search engine for kids by going on googleforkids.com
Instead - install google for kids on Google home, Alexa, other home smart devices - tell stories, play games, play quiz, etc.
Success metrics -
Acquisition
# of first-time visitors
Top N channels for acquisition
Top N reasons for acquisition - why is the kid here?
Click through rate
Activation
Avg. time spent daily/weekly/monthly
# of users who made their first search
# of users who read their first article
Bounce rate
Retention
Avg. # of daily/weekly/monthly sessions per user
DAU/WAU/MAU
# of articles read
# of searches made daily/weekly/monthly
NS - # of searches made daily/weekly/monthly
- What is the objective of this search engine
- Answer-Basically make research and learning fun and easy
- Geo - india to begin with
- No constrains to the project
- is this web based or app based product?
- Answer - its up to you
User type | Reach | Impact |
0 to 5 | Large | Medium |
6 to 13 | Large | Large |
Parents(support group) | Large | Large |
Teachers | Large | Large |
Pain points | Depth | Size |
Access to incorrect information /uneecessary information(divert mind) | Large | Large |
Acedemics is not fun always | Medium | Medium |
Mental preasure from parents to execel in studies | Large | Large |
Pick mental preasure and access to incorrect info
Sol | R | I | C | E | Phase |
- Have a table based app - which allows kids to search about their school/acedemic topics 1) History lesson chapter 1(we can use AI - i want to learn about history chapter 1 | High | High | High | High | 1 |
The chapeters in the learning can be explained throgh gen ai based videos generated keeping the schools teachers as part of guidance of the programme | High | High | High | High | 1 |
Immersive experience on the topic - kids can actually visit a fort in a 3d view of how it loooked like when akbars castle | Medium | Medium | Medium | High | 2 |
Reminders for kids to start preaaring for exams | High | High | High | High | 1 |
Q and A - after learning session post searches and scores around | High | High | High | High | 1 |
Analytics for parents /teachers to know what kids are searching and how well are they able learn and spend time and scored to keep a track on | High | High | High | High | 1 |
Non acemedic subjects like music , robotics | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium | 2 |
Sucess metric
- No ofstudents score what %
- 10 -80% %
- 20 - 65 % and so on
What company would this be for? Should I assume this is for google search? Yes
Is this an entirely different product for Google or a part of the search ecosystem? You can make your own assumptions
What are our goals with this product? Are we trying to increase acquisition amongst this user group? Yes assume that the goal is the acquire more users
Company mission:
The mission for Google is to empower people by organizing the world’s information and sorting it to be useful and accessible to all.
The goal for this product/ how this search engine will contribute to google’s mission:
This product will add to google search. I believe google search currently already allow you to filter out inappropriate content to a certain extent but this product will focus specifically on the needs and safety of children and make parents feel at ease with their child’s everyday browsing and them being able to access appropriate information on the internet.
There are 2 pieces of puzzles here:
Children
Parents/ Guardian
Users:
Children who want to get access to information they need
Parents who want their children to stay safe on the internet and get access to appropriate/ approved content only
Teachers who want to take advantage of the internet when teaching in classes
For this product I would like to focus on the teaching use case because I believe for children below 14 years old, the most amount of search is done for the purpose of school work. This could actually fit well into the google ecosystem as it could be an educational product and give google competitive advantage for early acquisition for the young generation of users. Google’s partnership with education institutions can also drive revenue generation since the traffic will attract more advertisers looking to promote to this demographic.
User painpoints:
Can’t introduce technology into the classroom without it being too distracting - student tend to access gaming sites or other entertainment content instead of engaging with class material/ searching for the purpose of understanding what’s being taught
The internet is a dangerous place - false information are hard to identify, phishing traps and inappropriate information are visible to kids
Hard to monitor every student at the same time - want to make sure every student is using search safely and appropriately
Proposed solutions:
Subjects that require the most research for pre-14 children are math, social sciences, and sciences
Content filtering through class portals, and only topics related to the subject being taught can be accessed and information accessed by everyone forms a library that the class can universally access
Block sites that contain sensitive/ inappropriate content and language
Real-time content monitoring - certain domains can be marked so it will be flagged for the teacher’s immediate attention every time a student is accessing it. For example, sources that are considered not credible or sketchy domain names
MVP and feasibility:
Rating each functionality based on effort/ impact
H/H
L/H
M/H
For MVP, I would implement 2 and 3, at least initially, 2 is a must have for a children’s search engine’s promise of safety, 3 is lower effort compared to 1 and brings to the teacher’ attention every time someone is accessing sites that are not related to class/ not credible and provides a guard rail for the product. Both of these functionalities together address the engagement/ safety problems. 1 is a bit too high effort to implement right away, I would wait to see if there’s a product market fit first/ adoption first before developing this functionality.
Potential risks/ constraints
What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where are the boundaries for censorship, there’s potential for teachers abuse this, such as: would LGBTQ+ related content be considered appropriate? this would really depend on the teacher
CQ:
Role & company - Google PM
Goal - Drive engagement for children of that age
Timelines & constraints - 3 months, NA
Geo - India
Platform - App or web -> lets focus on App considering the mobile penetration
Approach: User Persona, Pain Points/Use Cases, Solutions, Metrics
User Persona:
Children
H frequency
M frequency
L frequency -> focussing on this base as the frequency of occurrence would be highest and thus the possibility to make an impact
Parents
Teachers
Use Cases/Pain Points:
Before search
What to search - people mostly know what to search so this won’t be a P0 item
How to search - kids are familiar with type/voice based commands
During search
Parental controls
Interactive results - makes sense for kids who relate to images more than text
Time spent
After search
Save the search for future usage
Share with friends for fun/learning etc.
Solving for during search use cases:
Interactive results:
Image based result by default to grab attention -> H impact, M-H effort
Voice based result output
Filter based option to
Time spent:
Dashboard indicating time spent on search portal, number of searches made -> L-M impact, L effort
Set time limit per day
Parental control:
Build separate profile for kids like we have in Amazon kids
Restrict specific searches basis collected age, demographics -> M impact, M-H effort
Summary of features:
Image based result by default to grab attention
Dashboard indicating time spent on search portal, number of searches made
Restrict specific searches basis collected age, demographics
Metrics:
Engagement:
No of searches made/day -> trend daily, weekly, monthly
No of searches per kids profile
% image based result delivered
% instances wherein the user found most relevant search in top 3 (measured via clicks and session length)
Firstly, I would like to start with some clarifying questions to this:
Clarifying questions:
Are we designing this search engine for Android or IOS?
As this would be for children what can be the use-case?
What will be the minimum age of the child user?
Can kids use these search engine in their Schools as well?
Do they really need a specific search engine?
Clarifications:
We can start designing first for Android and then followed by IOS.
Kids these days have their personal cell phones and the major use they have is for studying, connecting with each other, designing, watching, listening to music, and often playing games.
Users' age can start from 4 to 14.
Yes, these can be used in schools as well by students as well as their teachers
Kids below the age of 14 do need a search engine. Because the current search engine does not have any restrictions or age limitations. So, many times kids get into the wrong means of using it.
User Groups:
School Kids: this group uses SE for daily activities in the school and for study purposes.
Nursery/ KG kids: These kids use SE for browsing poems, stories, drawings, etc.
Kids with some special needs: SE for these kids can help in speech synthesis and enhance their learning.
Teachers: These teacher groups will help kids to learn the usage of this SE.
Target User:
Special kids: These kids need a SE for learnings as well as growing like others.
School kids: These kids need a SE with a set of restrictions on their usage.
Pain points:
How to use: Kids face difficulties in using a web browser at the start as they aren’t familiar with it.
What to Search: They will need instructions before searching and using the browser.
Voice Search: As these kids won't be well versed with keywords, they will need a microphone to spell it correctly.
Need of Exciting features: Kids can’t adapt data like elders, hence they will some graphics or animations while fetching the data.
Time limit for search: Kids should have some time limit while using a browser. So, they don’t completely rely on it for their learning.
Image Scanner: This could help kids scan images as well as large text.
Safety from Hackers: As kids are using this browser there are high chances of accounts being hacked. Hence, this needs to be secured first.
Customer Support: As kids won’t know how to request support, so there has to be an add-on or extension to their parents for these services.
Solutions:
How to use: Kids face difficulties in using a web browser at the start. We can design UI which helps them with the usage.
What to Search: As we discussed there should be certain limitations for searching and scrolling on the web. Hence, kids can certainly search only the data available or set for their ages.
Voice Search: As these kids are not well versed with keywords, we can set up a microphone that can spell a keyword they speak and search like the current browser we have. And this can be enhanced by adding a feature that reads the word and provides a list of synonyms as well as pronunciation for the same.
Exciting features: We can add a feature that helps them to track their activities and consistency while reading. Also, we can develop UI that changes with the concept and helps them understand depending upon the niche they are searching for along with prompts with notifications to continue from where they have left.
Time limit: Excess use of this browser can lead to a dependency and will kill the ability to think and approach a solution or brainstorm ideas. Hence, we can set a timeline feature that will kill/stop the session over time.
Image Scanner: A scanner can be added to scan images, long text, or even videos that are being searched. This scanner can be connected to a parent's device which notifies them of what is being searched.
Safety and security: The browser will have a strong security policy and any kind of inappropriate activity found will block the user and during this process, the parents will get notified automatically. Hence, making it safer and more secure for kids.
Customer support: As parents will be notified for every activity done by their kid. Similarly, in the case of customer care support, they can request or raise a complaint n their kid’s behalf.
Prioritization:
Pain points | Effort | Impact | Priority |
Usage | M | H | P0 |
What to search | M | M | P1 |
Voice Search | M | H | P2 |
Exciting Features | H | H | P1 |
Time limit | M | H | P2 |
Image Scanner | M | M | P2 |
Customer Support | H | H | P0 |
As we are designing this for kids and the priorities need to be considered as P0 and P1 are the most important and P2’s are the add-on features ahead.
Metrics:
The mains metrics we need would be-
User adaptation: for kids to adapt to this SE and get used to the features available.
User Engagements: Creating awareness and making this as a habit for kids to use this browser instead of the current one’s. Eg: Schools can make usage of this SE a compulsion.
Product Growth: As the users increase into DAU, MAU. We can enhance and add more features based on the requirements.
Retention rate and Conversion rate: No of users continuing the use of this browser and getting converted to daily users from MAUs
Usability and Support Metrics: This can help to get details about user experience and also can help to improve customer support services.
Feedback: Parents can help us with the feedback and provide their inputs for further process.
Summary:
As we are designing a web search engine for kids below 14 years of age, we have concisely about the pros and cons and built the features. Hence, we can start designing first for Android applications and check the usage. Also, we can ask for regular feedback from parents or guardians for this search engine which can help us to understand and process other things required.
Clarification:
- Are we targeting a specific region?
- What is the need for launching this? Is it to address the need for education by clarifying their doubts or is it for general purpose?
- What is the scope? Is it going to be an App or web or both?
- Does it require parental access?
- What is the goal?
Assumptions for above clarification:
- Global
- General purpose
- Both
- No. As there are product already available in the market that can be controlled/access restricted by parents. So this one is going to be a child friendly independent product that the kids can use on their own. Infact this is the USP for launching this search engine. It does not require a login. Can be used as a guest like how we use Google now.
- As this is the new product, I am going to focus on Adoption and engagement for now.
User segment:
- Children under the age of 5- Kindergarten children that will not need this
- Children from age 5 to 10- Usually they will be between Grade 1 to Grade 5.
Use cases: They may search for basic concepts (numbering, spelling, basic sciences). Easy games. Cartoons and animation movies etc
- Children from 10 to 14- Between Grade 6 to Grade 8. Use cases: They may search for lil more than basics. Science questions, tutorials, search for books to read, movies, music, etc
Current Pain points:
- Safety- Not child friendly contents. Needs Parents' intervention to make it safe.
- Difficulty in searching what they want. Correct usage of words may be challenging as they are still growing. Probability of getting the right content is very low.
- Too many diversions in the content. While searching for educational related purpose, they might get diverted with other things like advertisements, gaming etc.
Possible solution to address above pain points:
- Restricted content - Child friendly filter is already applied on this search engine by default. It will not show any Adult contents.
- I would like to categorize it by Age group first to show more relevant contents. The home page will have 2 tiles- For Children between 5 and 10; For children from age 10 to 14;
- Once this is selected the second level selection would be identifying the purpose. Educational (All concepts related to syllabus); Entertainment (books, games, puzzle, Child friendly movies);
The above 2 points will clearly address the pain points mentioned in 2 and 3. Thus increases engagement too, which is our goal.
- Restricting the screen time- By default the advisable screen time of any child is 1 hour per day. The same is set per session. If 1 hour is over, the screen redirects to a page that warns them about the over usage. It records screen time everyday.
Are we talking about mobile or web based products? Web
Who are we? Google
Any specific reason/goal/context why we are thinking about building this product? There seems to be a gap in the market. Kids nowadays are starting to use digital products early on and providing them good and safe internet search experience is going to be critical.
Why should we build this?Trends & Opportunity
Untapped opportunity
Strengths & Weaknesses
Already a search giant
A lot of algorithmic learning can be transferred
Building a search engine for kids might not be scalable and monetizable.
Goal of the product
User engagement
UsersMap the ecosystem
Kids
Teachers
Parents
I am going to focus on kids as the primary user persona as they will be the one using it and should get the maximum value out of it. We can build for parents/teachers as a secondary persona to give them monitoring control on how the kid uses it.
Segmenting
Kids
Age 0-2: Infants & Toddlers
Age 2-6: Preschoolers
Age 6-12: School Kids
Age 12-16: Teens
Prioritize a segment
I am prioritizing building for school kids aged 6-12 years. Kids aged 0-2 years are too young. Preschoolers aged 2-6 years old are still thinking majorly in terms of symbols and are not able to interpret text easily. Teens aged 12-16 years old may be a bit old and may already be using normal google search.
Identifying pain pointsCreate a user journey & identify pain points
Pain points of kids
|
Pain point of parents
Monitoring | Parents want search experience to be safe and need any inappropriate content and images to be blocked. |
Parents want to monitor which websites kids are browsing. | |
Parents need to monitor the amount of time spent on the app. | |
Parents need to be able to download their kids' data. | |
Fun & Learning | Parents want their kids to have fun while browsing. |
Parents want their kids to learn something while using these apps. |
Prioritize pain points
How painful?
Number of alternatives that exist?
Stage | Pain Point |
Pre search | Kids may not always know what to search. For example, if they want to watch science videos, they may not know how to search. (Exploratory search) |
Kids may want to know what other kids are searching for. (Trending) | |
During search | Kids don’t know the right spelling of what they want to search. |
After search | Kids want the search experience to be fun and engaging, otherwise they may get bored or lose focus easily. |
Kids can’t read a lot of textual information to find which websites are good. | |
Kids want the landing websites to be in simple, easy to understand language. | |
Kids need the search experience to be more interactive to keep them engaged. |
Monitoring | Parents want search experience to be safe and need any inappropriate content and images to be blocked. |
Parents want to monitor which websites kids are browsing. | |
Parents need to monitor the amount of time spent on the app. | |
Parents need to be able to download their kids' data. | |
Fun & Learning | Parents want their kids to have fun while browsing. |
Parents want their kids to learn something while using these apps. |
Brainstorm solutions
Articulate vision and then talk about specific features in detail.
Product strategy: A fun and visual search experience for kids with a lot of engagement and safety features in place.
Pain point | Solution |
Kids don’t know the right spelling of what they want to search. | Autocomplete Spell correct Voice search
|
Kids want the search experience to be fun and engaging, otherwise they may get bored or lose focus easily. | Gamification: Engage kids through gamified elements such as badges of appreciation and encouraging gifts that await them at various milestones. Badges can be their avatar which can be upgraded/customized as the user spends more productive time. E.g. 5 searches, 5 page clicks, 20 min spent |
Kids can’t read a lot of textual information to find which websites are good. | Big thumbnails: Results are illustrated with big thumbnails, which makes it easier to scan the results, differentiate between them, and click the most appropriate results to your query. Thumbnails serve as visual clues and are especially beneficial to kids as they don't read as fast as adults. Large fonts in search results provide better readability for kids. |
Kids want the landing websites to be in simple, easy to understand language. | Kids-oriented results: the boxes below illustrate how search results for each query is shown (in the order shown):
Ad free landing pages |
Monitoring | Parents want search experience to be safe and need any inappropriate content and images to be blocked. | Create an account for your kid with their name and a picture. Kid safe content: All search activity is filtered content. It blocks inappropriate content and images, uses strict keyword filtering, and allows for searching of information that is “kid-friendly.” |
Parents want to monitor which websites kids are browsing. | Activity Monitoring: See what links and images are being clicked. Allow to see webpage content when kids answer verification questions with the help of parents. | |
Parents need to monitor the amount of time spent on the app. | Sleep Mode | |
Parents need to be able to download their kids' data. | Data Management - Download kid’s data | |
Fun & Learning | Parents want their kids to have fun while browsing. | Part of child solution |
Parents want their kids to learn something while using these apps. | Part of child solution |
Prioritize Solutions
Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort
Autocomplete
Spell Correct
Gamified Badges
Big Thumbnails
Large font
Kid oriented results
Sleep mode
Active monitoring
List down key metrics for success
Average no of searches per kid
CTR
Average click depth
Zero result percentage
Average time spent
Blocking out keywords could potentially block out useful or educational content
1. A web search engine is built for web or mobile:- Both
2. Do we have any specific age group we are building it for:- let’s take 10-14 years.
3. Are the children we are seeing has any disability:- no all are normal children.
4. Is there any specific geography for which we are building this product:- You can choose India
5. Is it an extension of any product or a completely new service:- A completely new service So I am assuming the main goal for it is to gain users.
6. I am assuming there is no time, money, or resource constraint.
7. Is their any specific sector or any particular goal we are building for children like education sector, entertainment etc:- lets assume we are building it for education purpose.
Business Goal:- To target new customers.
⭐ Situation:-
We have to build a web search engine that works both on mobile and web for the children with no disability between age 10-14 years of India that makes education easy.
⭐ User Segments:-
According to me their will be three end users of the product:-
1. Children
2. Parents
3. Teachers
According to question lets focus on Children for its development.
⭐ User to whom we are targeting:-
Assuming if a children is using web search engine he has a very decent knowledge of working with computers.
**Use cases For Children for education:-**
1. To find the Assignments Answers.
2. To find the content related to their syllabus to study.
3. To find the sample test papers for their practice.
**Prioritization of the problem:-**
Their would be a frequent usage for the children for finding the resources and answers for the assignment compared to the test papers and material to study for syllabus. So I am choosing for this problem to solve.
⭐ Solution:-
1. **Search through Image :-** A student can find the answers to the question by just uploading the image of the question inspite of writing it which saves time and increases accuracy.
2. **Voice Search:-** Search feature on voice that increases the adoption of question more easily for the student
3. **Importance of the question :-** A ML technology that tells after analyzing the previous years papers what is the Importance of the topic and the difficulty level.
4. **Bookmark the question:-** As a student find some question very important according to our third feature he can book mark it and can read it whenever he wish to have a look at it.
5. **Resources library:-** A library compiled especially for the students in collaboration with their teachers so that student has to not worry for the assignments finding always.
6. **Reminder:-** A reminder feature for the students to make them remember about the task/assignment pending, which if not present can make them loose marks.
7. **A-Z keyboard:-** A normal keyboard that makes easy for them to type the questions without struggling with the keyboard characters.
| Solutions | Impact | Effort |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Search Through Image | Medium | Medium |
| Voice Search | Medium | High |
| Importance of the Question | High | High |
| Bookmark the question | High | Low |
| Resources Library | High | Low |
| Reminder | High | Medium |
| A-Z keyboard | High | Low |
For our MVP Part we can go ahead with the ones that are having High Impact and then we can continue to medium impact ones that require low efforts.
⭐ Success Metrics:-
**North Star Metric :- Number of Daily Active Users**
**Activation :-**
1. Number of features used per person.
**Retention:-**
1. Average Time spent on App/User
2. Weekly Active Users.
These metrics are define taken into consideration that the app will work fine when launched and to measure the PMF of the product.
Clarifying questions:
- Are there any reasons why existing search engines on the market not working for kids under 14 yo?
- Are there any specific objectives I shall keep in mind while designing this product? such as to offer parenting control while enabling the youth to explore and learn?
- There are age groups of 0-5, 5-8, 8-10, 10-14 which age group under 14 year old are we targeting as user?
- Do these kids have any physical or other limitations that I need to be aware of?
- What platform will this search engine be used for? Mobile device, Web based?
Let's assume the interviewer confirms that this search engine is for 10-14 year old kid without any additional constraints to be considered. Mostly used in web based setting on a computer or mobile web browser.
Propose a structure:
Who is the user, why do they need this product:
- Homework help:
- Interested to learn more about specific topics
- Interested to find images and video content for topics of interest
- Looking for topics of interest on a specific subject
- Search and download content such as music, games, puzzles
- Search and learn more about sports, specific activity
Existing Search engines comparison:
- offers search engine capabilities, user profile creation, no parental control/ view.
- Doesn't offer safe search option, the queries are not indexed with the young audience in consideration.
Gaps/pain points?
- There is no age appropriate content based search engine available
- There is no search engine with parental control
- Existing search engine does not offer capabilities to keep young audience engaged on the platform.
Identify primary/secondary users:
Kids, parents, teachers
Core use cases:
Search engine that enables parental control
Search engine that offers curated result and age appropriate content
Search engine that is fun, colorful and will improve engagement for kids
Secondary use cases:
Parents that want visibility in kid's safety while they browse online content
Teachers that want to direct kids to research on specific topics
Let's focus on the Kids as that is the primary user here:
Solution 1:
search engine that requires use profile Parent>child
Offers curated search based on the profile, interests
Algorithm will show kids results based on the history, learns over time to increase engagement
Solution 2:
Search engine that has curated content for search results-- Age appropriate search indexing, audited material, references
Safe search already in place, no need for additional parental supervision
Shows trending search items for similar age group
Solution 3:
Search engine where parents can configure the safe search criteria for their kids
Algorithm will show kids results based on the history, learns over time to increase engagement
Provides a summary that offers parents a view of the child's browsing history
Summarize:
I propose solution 3 with slight modification , a search engine that offers keyword based search functionality, the content/results will be curated for children for relevancy, age appropriate content based on the settings. A summarized view is nice to have for parent's peace of mind.
Success metrics:
Engagement: How much time kids spend using it?
How many kids are using it?
Clarification
1- Age brackets: If we want to enable searches, we need audio or text input, can we take an age group of 5-14 so that we ensure that children are able to read, write and speak what they want? -Yes
2- Any assumptions about which place these children come from and what language they speak? - India, Hindi
3- Who are the buyers - Is this search engine specifically targetted towards schools where these children would use them, or do we want to search engine which is kind of open to all in general - Open to all
4- Any specific platform for usage - Phone, tablet, desktop. - Phone
5- Product goal - It's a new product, so first we should try to see whether our product works with the chosen customer segment or not. Metrics should be around this
6- What type of seach engine - Text search, image search, video search - Text
Let me structure my thought and then present it to you
Structure
I would want to go in this sequence-
1- People: Are there any other participants along with children?
2- User goals: Goals for all the participants
3- Place of product - Task of places or devices as to how the product is downloaded and used.
4- Use cases and user journey
[Take an existing search engine as a base. We could look at a unique user journey as well, but for now I am going by the existing seach engine functionality]
5- Pain points
6- Solution to pain areas
7- Pricing - Basis this there could be inputs to the product
8- Awareness
9- Matrices to measure the success rate on (Pilot launch)
# Usage rate # User feedback # Repeat usage
1- People
Children - consumer
Parents/ Guardian - If children are at home
Wardon - If children are at boarding school - Not considering now
2- User Goals
Children - Search with ease for things they are looking for.
Parents/guardians - Enable children to search and view results in a safe and secure environment. They may take the decision on the search engine on their child's phone. They would want to ensure that there are no obscene results or child doesn't get into online fraud or any activity that could harm them. They would also want to keep an eye on what they are searching for.
3- Place
Product - Mobile App
Download - Play store, and apple store
Usage - Phone
Control (Optional) - parent's phone
4- Use cases and user journey
Children can have these use cases
A-Search a topic related to study
B-Search social needs - Social media, school profile
C- Searching for videos
D- Installation - (Not considering this for now)
Okay, the use cases look similar. Let's look at the user journey
4.1- Thought of search [Outside the search engine]
4.2 -Go to search engine on phone
4.3- Search input
4.4 -Search
4.5- Choose one from the search results
4.6- View
4.7- Check other search results
4.8- Findings and close [Outside the search engine]
Parents:
Use cases
4.9-Set safe search on
4.10 -Monitoring
Not going into user journey
Pain points
P 4.3 -Chindren may be just learning language and writing, so they would probably prefer voice over text search (Assumption whihc can be checked with data). Howver, Voice input is not prominent as text search currently.
P4.4 - Okay
P4.5 - Very difficult to choose the right options
P4.6- Can't do anything here as it's website view
P4.7 -Very difficult to choose the right options
P4.8 - Difficult to validate or confirm if they got the right information.
Solution
S4.3 - Voice feature could be more prominent than text. And keep voice search by deaulft based on user's past interactiosn.
S4.5.1 -Have a diffeernt alogoritham for children search
A- Prioritize websites which are specific to chilrens's need like studies, hobbies, knowledge, kids sports, kids clothes, kids TV shows etc.
B- Prioritized websites which children found helpful.
C-Parse children search query keeping in mind that they may not be very direct or they might add lengthy text.
S.4.5.2-Show search results summary which are easily understood by children.
S.4.5.3- When seach queries are ambiguous, tell users based on past childnre's search, what they must be looking for.
S4.8 - Can't think of a way for validation now.
S4.9- Parents are worried for safe search, so let make the entire search entire safe search as it is specifically for children.
S4.10- Parents should be able to set monitor email protected by password, where all search history, usage statistics can be sent regularly.
Prioritization -
We can prioritize all the solution points based on their need and our estimates for thier effectiveness.
S.4.5 is seems to be the most impactful change.
Metrics - [checking effectiveness of the tool]
A- Average number of queries to complete a search - will tell how effective the s.4.5 alogoritham change was
B- Number of sessions per user - This number should increase with time, this would indicate that children are not getting trusted with the search experience.
So to summaries, we made certain assumptions about the search engine, identified the needs of children and parents, found search issues talking current search engine as base, suggested a few solution where alogoritham change was the major point and then listed a few metrics to check the success of the seach engine.
Q: How would you design a web search engine for children below 14 years old?
Clarify a few points here - Which geography do these children belong to and what would they use the search engine for primarily
Assuming that the search engine is being built for a global audience and children would primarily need it for educational purposes let's try and design it
What are the current use cases (not necessarily the ideal ones) of a search engine for children below 14 yrs of age:
1. Education - To learn something, for creating a project, completing an assignment, preparing for a GK Quiz, understanding history and geography
2. Entertainment - Search for games online, cartoon characters, Actors etc
3. Sports - Search for sports events, players, videos on their favourite sport etc
4. Art and Craft - Search for DIY projects like best out of waste etc
Alternatives and Problems with them:
1. Google/Yahoo/Bing: All the above-mentioned use cases can be realised using a normal Google search engine, but there are stark issues in doing this
Problems:
1. The internet is full of abusive, adult and dangerous content. If the child is searching on his own (without supervision) and gets across any of these contents, the impacts can be severe
The Child can get across an adult video, some violent videos, and some graphics not meant for a child
2. The children might be redirected to social media pretty easily, opening up a completely new world of distractions for them
3. It shows a lot of Ads, especially Shopping ads which the child could visit and even make expensive purchases
4. Google search's result format/ranking may not be apt for Children. It lists news, social media, maps, videos etc which might not be of much use to Children
Solution:
Design a Search engine that:
1. Restricts the unwanted content (mentioned above) in the search result - no adult content, violence, social media and shopping
2. Ad-free (More on this in the revenue model section)
3. One that has a result page and searches home page designed in a manner to promote education, interactivity and engagement:
A. The search page should have tiles below the search bar for Quizzes, Geography, History, Craft, Sports etc. Clicking on these would open a pandora's box of engaging activities for the Child to have fun and learn at the same time
B. The Search result page should have the meaning of the search term (if it is some adjective), useful educational videos and articles related to that term and an option to directly drag-drop/copy something from the result onto a small notepad area. The Child should be able to filter the results based on a list of categories mentioned above
4. Voice and Multi-language search along with Search suggestions
MVP can include:
1. Unwanted content Restriction
2. Ad-Free
3. The result page would have a filter for categories
Revenue Model:
Two Sources of Revenue:
1. A monthly/quarterly/yearly subscription model for individual Children
2. A monthly/quarterly/yearly subscription model for schools and other educational institutes - These entities can use the search engine as the default one in their computer lab systems.
Core Performance, Health and Revenue Metrics to track:
1. Number of Search queries per hour/day/week/month - This would be our North Star Metric
2. Percentage Searches that gave at least 5 results
3. Percentage of Successful searches. Successful search - user interacted with at least one search result
4. Bounce rate (100- Percentage successful searches)
5. Avg Session Time per user
6. Number of activities performed per day/week/month - Quizzes played, DIY videos viewed etc
7. Total monthly/yearly revenue
8. Revenue Share between individuals and institutes
Persona
Tech savvy
Voice assistants on watches, smart home hubs
Low attention span - needs to be super performant
Exposed social media a lot
Very aware of social issues
Privacy focussed
Parents want oversight
Has access to smartphone
Use cases
Latest music
Research school projects - science
Research for Art projects
Latest news
Local news
Sports - events
Pain points - Let’s pick a science project use case.
social media
Not enough information for the objective of learning
Not Catered towards learning
Not Privacy conscious
Traditional search engines
don’t have the social networking element
No guidance on whether something worked or what else they can look for
Solutions
Digital assistant: Interactive search engine through smart home hubs - Based on age and intent, ask questions and send information to their phones so that they can check it out. Provide ability to like or dislike the links and learn from that.
Web/Mobile : Youtube + Instagram : Design something where they can get video and image results with info on whether their friends have liked that content.
Guided collaborative search: Curated list based on some key questions about the project. Get feedback on whether it worked if not ask more questions. Have the ability to share the curated list with a friend and have them provide feedback on the links shared
Prioritization perspective
Solution 1 : Easy to build, just need to create the profile and add in guides on follow up questions, maximum impact coz it’s easy to use, existing tech could work on phones
Soution 2: Will need to build using components from search engine and youtube and build the social media element or integrations with social media. Maximum impact because you are capturing the social media searches back in the search engine
Solution 3: New way of searching together.. Hard to build and may not be real time. Less impactful
Short term - Solution 1 - Guided search on digital assistant
Long term - Solution 2- Video/Image focused search with social media integration for feedback on the links
What? Web search engine enables users to efficienty access new and relevant topics and content. Indexing and caching are key.
Search for knowledge and ideas vs Search for practical tips on how to do something (the latter could be taken care of by Youtube videos, etc.)
How can children compare results and decide which is relevant or high quality? Or should the results be crowdsourcing voted by parents as part of the knowledge graph?
Who/Why children? Many ways to consumer content, habit forming years - short video streaming apps such as TikTok or IG are really dominating the next generation's attention span, as well as direct messaging apps with fancy effects...
Any particular note about neurodiversity inclusion? Perhaps I will start by designing a solution for the majority of children, while being mindful of neurodiversity in the solution phase down the road...
Summary: enable children to search for and access age-appropriate, high quality information and ideas from around the world with efficiency
Business goal: once children (and parents) see value in this, this likely translates to increased engagement
- Metrics: # successful searches, time to successful search (counter metric: clicks before finding the right article or information)
- Considerations: privacy, anti-addiction | ethical design, neurodiversity inclusion
Primary users: children (by age group, or more importantly by literacy level, while considering learning modalities later in solution design...)
Reading Comprehension: Low vs Mid or High
Listening Comprehension: Low vs Mid or High
Secondary users: parental guardians, service providers
Will prioritize children with mid to high literacy level - more likely to use search engine and benefit from the content - need new information to supplement learning, which translates to bigger user value or impact
Need | Frequency | Need Acuity | Impact on Goal |
1 Too much noise or too little content? It takes effort to decide which result is high quality | H | H | H |
2 It’s difficult to come up with the right input for search. It takes a couple of tries | M | M | M |
3 It's not easy to save my favorite search results | M | L | M |
I will prioritize #1 and then #2. Given that #1 is the moment with the highest friction in user journey - feeling overwhelmed by choices, and #2 could improve activation (make it easier for children to ask questions and input questions)
Note: Web search could often be a private or solo activity, largely focus on 'me' instead of others' approval - so sharing with friends may not be that important yet.
Solutions
- End goal:
- enable children to search for and access age-appropriate, high quality information and ideas from around the world with efficiency
- HMW: make it easy for children to access high-quality content
Solution | User Value | Effort | Risk |
1 Curated content from approved creators for children | L | H | L |
2 Crowdsource voting from verified adults on contents appropriate for children | H | M | L |
3 Q&A - AI recommenders providing content based on children’s common questions and requests | H | H | H |
Clarification questions:
What kind of company are we? Do we have access to all resources to do this?
Are we the first to release this in the market? If yes, I would assume the business goal is to capture market share and get as many users as we can to use the product.
What is the product? Allow children to search information across the internet in an easy and accessible way
Users:
- Children below the age of 14: They are the primary users of the product and will use it to see search results.
- Parents/ Teachers: They are either moderators of the browser or can have separate profiles and contribute to the content students see (Eg: School can post homework and notifications)
Since we want to capture immediate market share, we will focus on our primary user segment - Children
Use cases: These are the following use cases for children:
- Searching information on the internet is not efficient: It is very difficult to parse through all the search results and see what could be useful
- Removal of explicit adult content from search results
- Collaborate better with friends on school projects
- Get notifications about school (Since this would also involve treating school as a user, we can reduce the priority on this use case)
Possible Solutions:
- First I would like to create a user profile, using the name and email address of the child/parent so that we can track how many users we have on the platform
- Make information easier to find. We could do this by prioritizing academic journals and research/ authentic information first in the search results. Once we have collected information on users, we can use that to show children "X% of users from your school found this information helpful" and rank search results accordingly.
Also, create separate sections for results like academic journals, discussion blogs, homework answers, interactive media, and categorize search results that make it easier for students to find what they are looking for.
- Use AI/ML to remove explicit content from the search results. We could later extend this to allowing parents to control the search results visible
- Create a time tracker that shows children how much time they spent on educational vs social media websites. This will help them monitor and track their time better.
- Making collaboration on projects easier by adding a side chat bar within the browser where children can easily drag and drop content into the chat that they want to share. This could also mean selecting a line in an article and dragging it to the chat window. This would automatically paste all the information like the article link, the highlighted text, the author, and the popularity of that article in the chat.
Prioritizing solutions: (1 least, 5 highest)
Feature | Useful | Cost-Effective | Total Score |
User profile | 5 | 4 | 9 |
Search results | 5 | 3 | 8 |
Remove explicit content | 3 | 3 | 6 |
Time tracker | 4 | 4 | 8 |
Chat for collaboration | 2 | 2 | 4 |
Hence I would prioritize the 2 features:
Create user profile
Search results
Time tracker (quick win)
Metrics:
Some metrics that I would use to track the success of this feature are:
- How many unique users do we have on the platform
- Avg search queries per user
- 7/30 days retention for each user
Drawbacks:
- Prioritizing search results by showing links that have been accessed by other students may create a bias in the long run and some useful content might get pushed back in the search results because students never accessed it initially.
- The time tracker will not be able to track time correctly if a browser tab is open and the student is not at his desk. We could extend this later to add a camera to see if students are present in front of the desk and are focused.
I would start off by focussing on "Engagement" as my goal since this is a new product and I want to make sure we have enough market penetration and then later on focus on retention and monetization once the product is famous and awareness about the product is acquired within the child population and their parents.
I'll divide the User groups and four categories based on age group and then go on defining what kind of acitivities they generally engage in.
Age Group | Description |
1-4 yrs |
|
5-8 yrs |
|
9-12 yrs of age |
|
13-14 yrs |
|
Based on the classification above, I would go for age group 13-14 yrs since it has a lot of potential for a web search engine to show content for these kids that will be useful for them academically as well as personal development.
Pain Points of these kids:
Pain Point | Impact | Priority |
Inappropriate Content not catered to specific age group (like it is in Netflix or Amazon Prime. Example: G, PG, PG-13, MA etc) | High | High |
Content is not filtered as per age for kids as well as parents who would want to search something for their kids. For example: Human Anatomy for a 5 yr old is different than a 14 yrs old kid which is different than a student in medicine. | High | High |
Content is not catered to the likings of these kids. For example: A 13 yr old kid looking for learning guitar online comes accross a lot of tutorials that might be advanced level. | Medium | Medium |
Kids might need intent based search. Example: I want to play basketball with my friends in xyz location (close to their home) | Medium | Low |
Solution:
Based on the above table, I would focus on the first 2 pain points and cater the search engine to show content as per age group (uesr input) and tagging it.
Basic Features for MVP:
- Input use age group as the first step.
- Show results based on the page ranking and the age group entered.
- If a child enters inappropriate keywords, block the results from showing based on the tagging.
- Suggest recommendations for similar items searched.
- Use intent based searching.
How would you design a web search engine for children below 14 years old?
Clarify the scope of the question
The pre-requisite would be for a kid to have some level of basic computer skills.
Are we focusing in the US or globally? Say US
Can I fairly assume it can be in English? Yes
It is for the Phone or PCs? Say I pick on PCs
What is the goal?
Potential goals of creating this web browser—
- Children appropriate content
- Help in their research for their homework
- Socialize with their friends, see what is popular to search for people in that age group.
- Respecting Privacy and prevention of fraud
What are user segments?
- Middle school – 10 to 14
- Junior School- less than 10
I would like to focus on students in Middle school who have a fair understanding of using computers more independently.
What are potential User Needs?
From a guardian perspective, the features that are crucial is content appropriate for children and protection of privacy.
- The needs of a student—Topics that they want to research to help them academically/education material
- Collaborate on projects with other people in the same age group
- Socialize with friends
Prioritize user need
- Education needs can be met
- Child appropriate content
- Protection of personal information
What are the solutions?
- In search results prioritize education materials coming from websites like Udemy, Coursera, educational magazines, business schools
- An inbuilt feature that can help connect with student who are doing similar projects
- Access to most websites but content only appropriate for kids
- Allow for parental controls.
Evaluate the solutions
# | Solutions | Impact | Effort |
1 | In search results prioritize education materials coming from websites like Udemy, Coursera, educational magazines, business schools | H | M |
2 | An inbuilt feature that can help connect with student who are doing similar projects | M | H |
3 | Access to websites but content only appropriate for kids | H | M |
4 | Allow for parental controls. | H | L |
I would go with 1,3,4 with the initial launch and add on to it as we progress to version 2
Give a high level of how the product will look
The look of the product would be like a generic search engine with a beta added to its name. The algorithms behind that have to be defined so that it serves the needs of the customer (point1,3) and their guardians.
Goal
We want to build a search engine for kids
We want to make sure it is safe ?
We are mainly focused on what features it should include and making it safe for kids
We are not focused on growing revenue / monetization considerations at this stage
Personas
- Parents of kids - They want to ensure their kids have a safe experience on the internet and want to control what they are able to see and search
- Schools - Kids use laptops in school so they want to ensure that kids are using this or have this installed on their school machines
- Children - Actual users of the search engine - will be using this for web surfing. However, as they are not decision makers they are our secondary users
User Needs
- Given that parents are the main decision makers for this I would like to stick to that user persona and come up with a list of features for them
- Device Controls
- Ability to set as default search engine on the device (laptop, mobile)
- Ability to prevent anyone else from changing default search / pwd protection
- Search controls
- Search of restricted categories and websites turned off by details
- Ability to view a log of search queries made on the device
- Ability to customize the search categories that they want to remove
- Device Controls
Prioritization
- I am going to rank each feature using the RICE framework - R - Reach, I - Impact, C - Confidence, E - Effort
- Device Controls
- Default engine set (R:10), (I:3), (C:1), (E:3) —> 10
- Password Controls (R:6), (I:2), (C:0.8), (E:3) —> 3.2
- Search Controls
- Restricted Categories (R:10), (I:3), (C:1), (E:1) —> 30
- Search logs (R:9), (I:3), (C:0.8), (E:2) —> 10.8
- Custom block list (R:3), (I:2), (C:0.5), (E:2) —> 1.5
- Device Controls
- Based on the above and to build a minimal viable product I think we need three things
- Setting our search engine as a default search engine
- Providing parents logs of searches that are being made i.e. search history
- Searching list blocking I.e. having a simple default search category for kids based on age (like under 8, under 14)
Solutions
- Default search engine
- Integrate app with different devices and have the ability to set it as default search engine
- Logs
- Record all logs searched on the device
- Send reports of logs to admin (parents) on a weekly basis
- Allow admin to log into the dashboard and search for logs on demand
- Get the admin to block certain categories on demand and these get added to the block list
- Block categories
- This is an easy option of parents to choose certain blocking types based on age
- Block categories mapped by us and stored
- We constantly refine based on machine learning i.e. identifying what searches are blocked in what region by parents having children on a specific age
Metrics
Key metrics to track growth in the early stage
- DAUs
- Search Query volume
Other Metrics
Acquisition
- No of signups for our search engine
Activation
- # of profiles created
- # of users setting us as the default search engine
- Referrals
Retention
- Search volume
- Search reports/log views
- Modifications in
- Stickiness (DAU/MAU)
We can design the same using below CIRCLES framework
C - Comprehend the situation
I - Identify the customers
R - Report Customer needs
C - Cut through prioritization
L - List solutions
E - Evaluate tradeoffs
S - Summarize your answer
Step 1: Ask Clarifying questions and state your assumptions
Search engine is it something like Google/Bing (or something else)?
Children below 14 years, any particular geography, education level, family background etc ?
Is the Search engine used by the child or his/her parent ?
Let's assume that we want to design a Web search engine (something like Google) for the children in India who are from digitally educated and well-to-do family (i.e. family salary > 10 lpa)
Also, the search engine is used by the parent
Step 2: Who is the customer persona
Revansh, age:7, lives in Pune and lives with mother,father. father is a IT manager and mother is school teacher
Revansh's mother has an android samsung phone worth INR 18,000
Step 3: What are the pain points of this persona
Revansh's mother uses the same phone for searching two kinds of query
One for herself and the other for her child
Below are the pain points while searching Query online for her child:
- Cannot find the relevent cartoons for him
- Cannot easily find relevent study material
- Cannot find ways and means to manage his growth (e.g. Career, Sports etc)
- Cannot find the good schools, tuition teachers etc around
- Cannot find enough information about the safety of children e.g. how safe is the school bus
Step 4: Prioritize the pain points
The top two pain points are as below:
- Cannot find enough information about the safety of children e.g. how safe is the school bus
- Cannot find ways and means to manage his growth (e.g. Career, Sports etc)
Step 5: List solutions
i) Safety guide
The search engine must understand that the query is related to safety and show detailed information from a child perspective
ii) Child career expeert
The search engine must list down genuine and authentic information about how to manage your child's career e.g. sports training, dance classes etc. nearby
Step 6: Risks
i) Safety guide
- The search engine might not find the real time data around the safety situation in any given place e.g. if an roit happened in a particular road through which the school bus goes
ii) Child career expert
The career expert might be good in their job but might have some serious complaints regarding them e.g. abuse etc which the Search results cannot warn its users against
Step 7: Metrics
i) Safety guide
#Search Queries, CTR, Bounce rate (i.e. results which the users clicked but returned back to click another result within 1 min),
NPS, %Negative reviews etc
ii) Child career expert
#Search Queries, CTR, Bounce rate (i.e. results which the users clicked but returned back to click another result within 1 min),
NPS, retention %
Design a web search engine for kids under 14 year old
Clarifying Questions :
1. Are we talking about web search engine only for kids or it can be generic ? Consider it's for kids
2. Is there a particular age group under 14 which we are considering ? Up to u , I would take 10-14
3. Any specific goal in mind ? To create user friendly and knowledgable experience for kids.
User groups and their Needs and Pain points
Children (10-14) : They are mostly from the urban background where children get access to the mobile devices and apps pretty early in their age.
Needs : They mostly look for the easier search of content. Contents with visual appeal is more attractive to them.
Pain points : Not really sure of what to search . Finds difficult to select the appropriate one from the listings.
Parents : Mostly working parents in tier 1 and 2 cities who are tech savvy. Due to their busy schedules often looking for their child’s development via technology.
Needs : Want their children to be responsible while searching and viewing the content. They look for their child to gain knowledge through this.
Pain Points : Parents are worried for their children spending longer time with mobile and tablets.
Feel scared if their children are watching malicious content.
Prioritized User Group: Parents
Solutions for Prioritized users :
- Secured and malicious free listings to be shown to children
- Smart content category selection based on age : Parents should be able to set different categories in the list of categories to be shown as recommended categories in the home page.
- Tracking the web search history through their device : Parents should be able to track the search history to be sure of the searches their kids are doing.
- Setting up learning goals : Parents can set daily learning goals and based on that search engine can suggest customized content like some knowledgable games or videos to watch. The same can be shown to kids in the daily goals section in the search app.
Prioritizing Solutions
Solution | Effort | Impact | Required |
Secured and malicious free listings | Medium | High | Must have |
Smart content category selection based on age | Medium | High | Should have |
Tracking the web search history through their device | High | Medium | Could have |
Setting up learning goals | High | High | Good to have |
Trade Offs :
- Accuracy factor in showing the customized content and recommendations for children based on their interest factor.
- Kids friendly content can be compromised due to the models being used.
Summary :
Design for a web search application for kids in tier 1 and 2 cities in age group of 10-14 years. Working to give a more delightful and secure experience to the parent in selecting the right content through smarter means.
In MVP version of the application, would be taking up these features :
Secured and malicious free listings |
Smart content category selection based on age
Please provide feedback. |
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