How Kid Pix Was Born: A Frustrated 3-Year-Old and a Quest for Software Design Beauty
The Origin Story of Kid Pix
Craig Hickman recounts how his son Ben's frustration with MacPaint led him to create Kid Pix in 1988. Guided by principles like extreme ease of use and surprising, satisfying interactions, Hickman designed a paint program that prioritized seeing the whole picture, offered wacky brushes and stamps, and introduced the Undo Guy. The original ran on a 9-inch black-and-white Macintosh screen.
The program should be extremely easy to use. No manual should be needed and program features should "explain themselves" through use.
- Elidrake24
The lack of experience in a child can lead to some funny situations. I want to say this happened in first grade or so, had a teacher, Mr Macintosh, who had several of his own Mac computers available in his classroom, and Kid Pix was loaded up on them (amongst other classics of the time). I was obsessed, particularly with the Bomb, thought it was just the coolest way to clear the screen, this ostensibly serious concept of a program made fun.
I also had difficulty connecting with my classmates, combination of untreated ADHD, and issues at home. For some reason I got it into my head that the bomb was cool, so if I told the others I had a bomb in my backpack I'd be cool! This was very shortly after the Columbine massacre, and of course the policy at that moment was to immediately call in the police. They talked with me, impressed upon my young mind the seriousness of such claims, and we all thankfully just moved on.
Odd to think back on now.
- LarsDu88
Kid Pix was the very first program I ever used on a computer when I was around 5 years old. Good times. Still remember the dynamite.
- pram
What a paradigm shift it was when us kids in the computer lab found out you can change the stamp size/stop the animations with shift, command, opt etc