My youngest figured out how to use an iPad before she could form a complete sentence. She couldn't tie her shoes, couldn't read a single word, couldn't reliably remember to close the fridge door. But she could navigate to her favourite app, scroll through the options, select what she wanted, and get the thing she was looking for - all with the unselfconscious confidence of someone who has never considered the possibility that technology might be difficult.
I watched this happen with the same mix of pride and alarm that accompanies most parenting milestones. But underneath the parental feelings, something professional clicked. This child is the ultimate usability test. She has no learned behaviours around software. She can't read labels. She doesn't understand icons as symbols. She has no patience, no tolerance for friction, and absolutely zero willingness to figure something out that isn't immediately obvious. She is, in other words, the user that every product designer should be designing for.
Lesson one: if it needs explaining, it's broken
The first thing you learn from watching a toddler use technology is that instructions are a failure state. If your interface needs a tutorial, an onboarding flow, a tooltip, or a "click here to get started" prompt, you've already lost. A toddler will never read your instructions. He will tap the biggest, brightest thing on the screen and expect something to happen. If something happens, he continues. If nothing happens, he moves on. There's no second chance.
This sounds extreme, and it is. Adults are more patient than toddlers. But not by as much as you might think. Studies consistently show that users decide whether a website is worth their time within a few seconds. They don't read. They scan. They look for visual cues that tell them where to tap, what to do, where to go. They're, in essence, behaving like slightly more sophisticated toddlers. The difference is that adults will occasionally read a short label. The similarity is that they'll never read a long one.
Lesson two: colour is the first language
Before my son could read, he navigated entirely by colour and shape. The YouTube Kids app is red. Netflix is red too, but a different red, and he never confused them. Spotify is green. Photos is a rainbow flower. He built a mental map of his apps based purely on visual identity - not names, not text, not even icons really. Colour first, shape second, everything else a distant third.
I think about this every time I choose a colour palette for a project. Colour isn't decorative. It is informational. It's the first thing a user processes, before they read a single word or understand a single icon. The colour tells them where they're and what kind of thing this is. Get the colour wrong and everything else has to work harder. Get the colour right and the user has an intuitive understanding of the product before they consciously register anything.
This is why I spend what seems like an unreasonable amount of time on colour selection for each project. Modern Retro's warm, 70s palette tells you what it's before you see a single image. CultureTerminal's dark, amber-accented interface says "news terminal" before you read a headline. The colour is doing work that no amount of good typography or clever copywriting can do. My son taught me that. He doesn't care about your font. He cares about whether the big colourful thing does something interesting when he taps it.
Lesson three: delight matters more than efficiency
The apps my son returns to aren't the most efficient ones. They're the most delightful ones. The ones with animations when you tap a button. The ones that make sounds. The ones where something unexpected happens when you swipe. Delight isn't a nice-to-have for a kid. It's the entire reason he engages.
Adults pretend they've outgrown this. They have not. The reason people love Monocle isn't that it's the most efficient news source (it might be, but that isn't the point). It's that it feels good to read. The typography is considered. The layouts are precise. There's a craft and a delight in the experience that goes beyond mere information. The reason people love Apple products isn't the specs. It's the feeling of using something that someone cared about making beautiful.
My son taught me that delight isn't optional. It's the difference between an app he opens once and an app he opens every day. And the same is true for adult users, even if adults are less honest about admitting it.
Lesson four: the back button is sacred
Nothing panics a toddler like being lost. One of the most common sounds in our house is a small voice saying "I can't go back!" followed by increasingly urgent tapping on the screen. The ability to undo, to go back, to return to a safe starting point is the most important feature in any interface. My son taught me this by having meltdowns when it was missing.
Every product I build now has obvious, consistent navigation. A clear way to go back. A clear sense of where you're. Breadcrumbs where they help. A home button that always works. These aren't exciting features. They don't make it into product demos or launch posts. But they're the foundation of trust between a product and its user. If people feel safe exploring - if they know they can always get back - they'll explore further. If they feel lost, they'll leave. My three-year-old taught me this, and he was right.
Lesson five: attention is earned every second
A toddler will give you about two seconds before deciding whether something is worth their time. Not two minutes. Not twenty seconds. Two seconds. And in those two seconds, they've made a judgement that's almost impossible to reverse. If the thing is interesting, they're in. If it isn't, no amount of persuasion will bring them back. They've moved on. There's always another app, another toy, another source of stimulation.
Adults have longer attention spans, but the principle is the same. Attention isn't given. It is earned. And it's earned continuously, not once. Every screen, every interaction, every moment is an opportunity for the user to decide this is no longer worth their time. Building products with this awareness changes everything. You stop designing for the engaged user and start designing for the user who's one second away from leaving. That's a much higher bar, and it produces much better work.
The best usability lab is your living room
I don't have access to a usability lab. I don't have a UX research budget. I don't have personas or user journey maps or whatever else the design thinking textbooks say I should have. What I have is a small kid who uses technology with zero patience, zero pretence, and zero politeness. He'll tell you, instantly and honestly, whether your thing works. Not in words - in behaviour. He either uses it or he doesn't. He either understands it or he doesn't. There's no middle ground.
This has made me a better builder. Not because I design products for a toddler. Because I design products with the same rigour that toddler-proofing demands. Is this obvious? Is this delightful? Can they find their way back? Does the colour communicate before the text? Is the important thing the biggest thing? These are toddler questions. They're also the best design questions anyone has ever asked.
If a three-year-old can't figure it out, neither can your user. They're just too polite to tell you.
