Adobe Systems was surprised that their products were being used in the production of a children's television show. According to Tracy, "Not even the developers of the software knew it could be used to create character animation on the scale Blue's Clues was using it", [109] Adobe later requested that the show's animators join their client development group, and made several changes and improvements to their software as a result. [109] In 2002, Crawley, Anderson, and their colleagues conducted another study on the effects of Blue's Clues, this time researching whether more experienced viewers mastered the content and cognitive challenges faster and easier than first-time viewers. They surmised that experienced viewers would comprehend and interact more with the recurring and familiar segments of the show designed to aid comprehension, but they found that familiarity with the structure of an individual episode did not provide experienced viewers with an advantage over the inexperienced viewers. Crawley and Anderson also studied whether experienced viewers of Blue's Clues interacted more with other children's TV shows and whether the viewing behaviors they learned from Blue's Clues could be transferred to other shows. [151] [152] They found that although experienced viewers of Blue's Clues interacted with an episode of another series, they did not spend more time watching it than viewers unfamiliar with the show. The researchers stated, "It is apparent that, although preschoolers learn to enthusiastically engage in overt audience participation, they do not, by and large, have a metacognitive understanding of why they do so." [141] Blue's Clues was designed and produced on the assumption that since children are cognitively active when they watch television, a television program could be an effective method of scientific education for young children by telling stories through pictures and by modeling behavior and learning. [25] [84] These learning opportunities included the use of mnemonics in the form of mantras and songs, and what Tracy called "metacognitive wrap-up" [84] at the end of each episode, in which the lessons were summarized and rehearsed. The producers wanted to foster their audience's sense of empowerment by eliciting their assistance for the show's host and by encouraging their identification with the character Blue, who served as a stand-in for the typical preschooler. [85]

Carlozo, Louis R. (22 August 2006). " 'Clues' turns 10; 'Arthur' enters new sphere". Chicago Tribune. Crawley, Alisha M.;Daniel R. Anderson; Angela Santomero; Alice Wilder; Marsha Williams; Marie K. Evans; Jennings Bryant (June 2002). "Do Children Learn How to Watch Television? The Impact of Extensive Experience With Blue's Clues on Preschool Children's Television Viewing Behavior". Journal of Communication 52 (2): 264–280. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2002.tb02544.xThe most important casting decision was that of the host, the only human character in the show. The host's role was to empower and challenge the show's young viewers, to help increase their self-esteem, and to strongly connect with them through the television screen. The producers originally wanted a female host. [47] After months of research and over 1,000 auditions, they hired actor/performer Steve Burns based on the strength of his audition. [47] [48] Burns received the strongest and most enthusiastic response in tests with the young audience. [49] Johnson said what made Burns a great children's TV host was that "he didn't want to be a children's host... He loved kids, but he didn't want to make a career out of it". [50] Burns decided to leave the show in the autumn of 2000, departing in January 2001. [51] He was in over 100 episodes of Blue's Clues when his final episodes aired in April 2002. [44] [52] Burns himself stated, "I knew I wasn't gonna be doing children's television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid's TV show, and it was happenin' – fast." [53] The producers and creators combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped their viewers learn, using research conducted thirty years since the debut of Sesame Street in the U.S. Unlike earlier preschool shows, Blue's Clues presented material in a narrative format instead of a magazine format, used repetition to reinforce its curriculum, structured every episode the same way, and revolutionized the genre by inviting their viewers' involvement. Blue's Clues". The Peabody Awards. 2001. Archived from the original on 2014-10-06 . Retrieved 29 December 2021. Weisman, Jon (2 August 2006). "Interactive innovator draws raves". Variety . Retrieved 28 July 2021. a b Norris, Chris (9 February 2004). "Me and You and a Dog Named Blue". Spin . Retrieved 15 June 2021.

The thinking games presented in each episode used what Anderson called "a layered approach" [86] that took the varying capabilities of the audience into account. Santomero said that they used scaffolding and that layering was inherent in the script and design of each game. They purposely presented the problem presented in increasing levels of difficulty, to prevent children from feeling frustrated and to master concepts, experience success, and feel empowered to attempt to solve more challenging concepts presented to them. The producers' goal was that all viewers understood the problem, even if they did not know how to solve it. As a result, the child was temporary frustrated by not knowing the answer because after giving them time to come up with it, child voice-overs provided the answers for them, so that they learned the correct answers, even if they were unable to come up with them. [86] [69] If the child was able to come up with the answers, however, they felt "part of a larger, knowing, child audience" [86] when their answers were confirmed by the voice-overs. [86] The child voice-overs also helped viewers maintain high levels of attention during critical educational portions of the episode and modelled the audience involvement encouraged by the program. [34] [69] The audience was told how they could help problem-solve by the host explaining how, by the child voice-overs modeling verbal participation, and by giving them enough time to respond. According to Johnson, the slow pace of the program was challenging for television directors used to the fast pace of television production and for parents, who praised the pace but expressed concerns that their children would find it boring. [30] Blue's Clues for Success: The 8 Secrets Behind a Phenomenal Business". Publishers Weekly. 17 May 2002 . Retrieved 3 June 2021. Moll, George (executive producer). "Behind the Clues: 10 Years with Blue" (2006). Short documentary. Countryline Productions. According to Dhingra and her colleagues, the researchers represented the preschool viewer. After coming up with an idea for an episode, the writers met with Alice Wilder, head of the research department for Blue's Clues, to discuss their idea. The research department and writers then discussed if the topic and approach to the topic was appropriate for preschoolers, and if they accepted it, the content of the episode was further developed. They would often bring in outside consultants who were experts in the subject matter and the processes in teaching it to preschoolers. Wilder considered the researchers experts in how the concepts they wanted to present would translate to the medium of television rather than in a classroom or museum, but they considered preschoolers, who evaluated each script from their perspective, to be their " true experts". [93] The writer took the information they gathered from the research department, preschoolers, and experts and wrote a treatment, or detailed outline of the script, which included goals for the entire episode and for each game. [94] The writers, Wilder, and the research team had a treatment meeting, which Dhingra and her colleagues described as "an organized creative brainstorm", [95] which was rooted in the philosophy and mission of the show, the art of good storytelling, and the point of view of their viewers. The goal of the treatment meeting was to give the writers everything they needed to create a workable second draft of the episode script, and to ensure that it fit the needs of their viewers. [93] Moore, Frazier (June 15, 1998). "Success of 'Blue's Clues' is no mystery". SouthCoastToday.com . Retrieved November 12, 2020.Regional versions of the show, featuring native hosts, have been produced in other countries. Kevin Duala hosted the United Kingdom version and the show became part of pop culture in South Korea. [128] [129] In total, Blue's Clues was syndicated in 120 countries, and was translated into 15 languages. [39] In 2000, it became one of the first preschool shows to incorporate American Sign Language into its content, with between five and ten signs used consistently in each episode. [130] Blue's Clues won an award from the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness (GLAD) for promoting deaf awareness in the media. [131] Cultural influence and impact [ edit ] Tracy, Diane. (2002). Blue's Clues for Success: The 8 Secrets Behind a Phenomenal Business. New York: Kaplan Publishing. ISBN 0-7931-5376-X.

Gladwell, Malcolm (2000). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown, and Company. ISBN 0-316-31696-2 Wadler, Joyce (23 May 2002). "Public Lives; Searching for Clues in the Land of the Blue Dog". The New York Times . Retrieved 15 June 2021. The 2002 studies demonstrated that experience with watching one TV series affects how children watch other programs, especially in the way they interact with them. [141] They also showed that since children are selective in the material they attend to and that their interaction increases with comprehension and mastery, children tend to pay more attention to novel information and interact more with material they have seen before and mastered. According to Crawley and her colleagues, Blue's Clues demonstrated that television could empower and influence children's long-term motivation for and a love of learning. As they stated, "One need only to watch children watch Blue’s Clues to realize that they respond to it with enormous enthusiasm". [146] a b Santomero, Angela (21 February 2018). "I Admired Mr. Rogers As a Mentor from Afar – Now I'm Walking in His Sneakers". USA Today . Retrieved 4 August 2021. The pace of Blue's Clues was deliberate, and its material was presented clearly. [42] Similar to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, [87] this was done was in the use of pauses that were "long enough to give the youngest time to think, short enough for the oldest not to get bored". [39] The length of the pauses, which was estimated from formative research, gave children enough time to process the information and solve the problem. After pausing, child voice-overs provided the answers so that they were given to children who had not come up with the solution and helped encourage viewer participation. Researcher Alisha M. Crawley and her colleagues stated that although earlier programs sometimes invited overt audience participation, Blue's Clues was "unique in making overt involvement a systematic research-based design element". [69] Blue's Clues also differed from Sesame Street by not using cultural references or humor aimed at adults, as this could confuse preschoolers but, instead, made the show literal, which the producers felt would better hold the children's attention. [88] The structure of each episode was repetitive, designed to provide preschoolers with comfort and predictability. [84] Repetition of the same skills used in different contexts or games within and across episodes encouraged the mastery of thinking skills and the approach to content within an episode was consistent with learning theory that emphasized situated cognition and provided all viewers, no matter their age or abilities, with repeated opportunities to try to solve the problems presented. [34] [89]Lee, Felicia R. (22 April 2000). "A Children's Adventure in a Deaf World". The New York Times . Retrieved 29 December 2021.