Kids corner: design flaws?

[zonoskar]

I recently bought a Lumia 920 and I'm loving it. I don't have kids, but I thought I could use kids corner to shield my phone from colleagues or the wife But there is a serious design flaw in the implementation of kids corner. Or at least, that's the way I see it.

I guess Microsoft designed it in such a way that you unlock the phone, swipe to kids corner and then give it to your kids.

When you enable kids corner, you can opt to assign a passcode to unlock your phone. You can also chose a timeout. After being on the lock screen for more than the timeout, the passcode needs to be entered again. If you unlock the phone before that time, no passcode is needed. This is the first flaw. If you give it to your kids, they can simply lock the phone and unlock it again to get control of the complete phone. Not what I would call safe. The second design flaw (again, IMHO) is when you remove the timeout, which is what I want. If you give the phone to your kids and they accidentally lock it, they must enter the passcode before it can be unlocked. So either you give them the passcode, or you unlock the phone yourself. This could get tedious You cannot assign a separate passcode to the kids corner (or none).

What I would like is to set a passcode with no timeout and no (or different) passcode on the kids corner. In that way, you can give your phone to anyone and they cannot access the phone, only the kids corner. This way kids corner can also be used for people without kids as an unsecure area of your phone. Put all apps there that are safe and you can lend it to anyone without fear of loosing or stolen data.

Or is there something I'm missing?

 

[chancooluk]

I had just come online to post this exact same thing!

Why should the Kid's need to input the password to get into Kid's corner? It means that they have to keep asking the parent to type it in everytime they want to use the phone. Seems complete madness to me, unless there is a way to turn off the password for Kid's Corner? I can't see one...

 

[aubreyq]

Whoa. I thought Kids Corner worked differently. I thought you could always swipe to Kids Corner no matter what, but if the phone was locked then the kids couldn't get to the other stuff that wasn't in Kids Corner (e.g. phone, messages, Facebook, etc).

 

[chancooluk]

Whoa. I thought Kids Corner worked differently. I thought you could always swipe to Kids Corner no matter what, but if the phone was locked then the kids couldn't get to the other stuff that wasn't in Kids Corner (e.g. phone, messages, Facebook, etc).

Yes, that would make sense wouldn't it! I'm hoping that they've hidden an option to turn off the password for Kid's Corner. Doubt it though. It's a useful feature, made useless.

 

[jimski]

If the implementation is in fact as the OP describes, then that is really dumb. No PW for Kids Corner and always PW for the rest of the phone. How hard can that be to implement.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

 

[martinmc78]

Its not that bad an idea if you think about it. I would like to be able to leave my phone laying around safe in the knowledge my little girl cant just pick it up and play with it. Would rather she got my permission to use it first and by me having to enter the passcode that first time does the job. Once its been unlocked it stays unlocked for the kids corner while keeping my portion of the phone secure, should my little girl accidentally lock the phone she only has to unlock it and swipe over and up to get access to kids corner.

 

[chancooluk]

Its not that bad an idea if you think about it. I would like to be able to leave my phone laying around safe in the knowledge my little girl cant just pick it up and play with it. Would rather she got my permission to use it first and by me having to enter the passcode that first time does the job. Once its been unlocked it stays unlocked for the kids corner while keeping my portion of the phone secure, should my little girl accidentally lock the phone she only has to unlock it and swipe over and up to get access to kids corner.

Why can this not simply be down to the user - allow access without a password, or don't.

Also, Kid's Corner requires a password everytime it's accessed if the password is set up to ask each time.

 

[zonoskar]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks this is not really useful. To make it work, MS should add an option to remove the passcode for kids corner so both scenario's can be used. There is something to say about needing a passcode each time for the kids corner as I didn't think of the scenario provided by @martinmc78. Thanks.

 

[martinmc78]

Why can this not simply be down to the user - allow access without a password, or don't.

Also, Kid's Corner requires a password everytime it's accessed if the password is set up to ask each time.

I agree that would have been ideal but i think they have sort of catered for it by allowing you to set the password timeout to up to 30 minutes

 

[Reflexx]

I'd like there to be the option of not requiring a password at all for Kids Corner.

But I agree with martinmc78 that it's still very useful to parents as-is. It's not "useless" as chancooluk describes it.

It's definitely a good idea that could use additional options and features.

 

[gsquared]

Nothing to get your knickers in a knot over!

Its a brand new feature. It may take a little time to work it out. Most things that look great on paper rarely workout in actual production. At least in its "on-paper" form.

 

[jhoff80]

One thing about Kid's Corner that seems dumb to me is that there's no way to add IE.

What should happen is that it should bring up an IE guest session, with no trace of my history or cookies from actually using it. Instead, you just can't add IE. As I don't have any kids, the feature would be more useful for me as a guest account when someone wants to check their email or something, and that's not possible with the way it works now.

 

[MaulerX]

That's odd. The way Joe Belfiore demoed it on his video, all you (or a kid) has to do is swipe from the right while on your lock screen. That takes you to a Kids Corner unlock screen where then you swipe up to unlock as usual.

I thought the option to put a pass code was there to prevent your kid from accidentally accessing your phone and it's contents.

 

[martinmc78]

That's odd. The way Joe Belfiore demoed it on his video, all you (or a kid) has to do is swipe from the right while on your lock screen. That takes you to a Kids Corner unlock screen where then you swipe up to unlock as usual.

I thought the option to put a pass code was there to prevent your kid from accidentally accessing your phone and it's contents.

OK so this is how it works - Ive got my password timeout set to 15 mins - I unlock my phone put in the password then lock it again - give it to my daughter she then hits the unlock button swipes across then up and shes in. If she locks the phone and leaves it for a few minutes she can come back to it swipe across to kids corner then up to carry on playing - if she locks it, leaves it then unlocks it she cannot get access to my portion of the phone without the password - if she leaves the phone for longer than the password timeout of 15 mins she has to ask me to unlock the phone again.

The way Joe B showed it in the demo he had already been on his phone during the demo so therefore all he had to do was give his kid the phone to swipe across then up

 

[fwaits]

One thing about Kid's Corner that seems dumb to me is that there's no way to add IE.

What should happen is that it should bring up an IE guest session, with no trace of my history or cookies from actually using it. Instead, you just can't add IE. As I don't have any kids, the feature would be more useful for me as a guest account when someone wants to check their email or something, and that's not possible with the way it works now.

The only thing I can think of is that access to IE would allow someone to get to the Store and such which could be a bad thing.

 

[wpoblation]

No PW for Kids Corner and always PW for the rest of the phone. How hard can that be to implement.

I would think that this is the correct implementation for this feature. How can it not be? Do other platforms have a similar feature and how did they implement it?

 

[zonoskar]

Funny thing is..... .this video shows how I think it should work (and apparently it works like that for him).

Windows Phone 8 and Kids Corner - YouTube

But for me, it doesn't work like that. Here's a little video of my Kids corner:

KidsCorner - YouTube

Strange?

 

[lonbraj]

WP8 is in Beta. I'm sorry to say that but it's the truth. Syncing music/podcast doesn't work really well, people related needing use WMP (WHAT?!). Desktop sync app for Windows is in Beta. Skype isn't released. Kid's Corner looks broken to me (PW/IE). They didn't fix many flaws in WP7.

I love WP UX and smoothness. They did a great job supporting new hardware, man, these apps load DAMN FAST. But it's not ready. The background is done, now fix the user experience! Windows Phone will only be released in Brazil by February, by that date I expect they release an update.

@zonoskar Your red lumia looks SEXY

 

[scumdogmillionaire]

Yeah, this didn't make any sense to me either. They need to patch this.

 

[jsk0703]

Did anyone contact Microsoft? Surely they can't fix the issue if they are not aware of it. This goes for any issue not just the kids corner.