Go! Adventure
Go! Adventure is a digital experience that aims to get kids excited about learning in a context where they can pursue plant, animal, and habitat topics based on their particular interest. By reading, journaling, and engaging in exploratory play centered around these topics, children will gain exposure to new vocabulary and ideas, internalize introduced topics, and practice teamwork, collaboration, and co-play to put these ideas into practice.
Planning.
Design choices are influenced by a literature review of key design aspects of early childhood education and the role of caregivers in building educational foundation, in addition to a competitive analysis of existing educational apps for young children.
Early sketches focus on establishing user flows and wireframe layouts, focusing on features that facilitate co-learning with parents and peers.
Product.
The three activity categories within the app are tailored to the age and individual learning levels input by a parent during onboarding. This choice can be adjusted later as needed. The three levels are 1 (Ages 3-5), 2 (Ages 6-8), and 3 (Ages 9-10).
Play
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All Levels have a Co-Play option.
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Level 1: Co-Play mode is aimed at parents and focuses on identifying objects and developing pattern recognition.
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Level 2: 50/50 mix of parent and peer/sibling Co-Play options and slightly more complex ideas.
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Level 3: Games use more complex vocabulary and topics, with the most independent play options.
Journal
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Level 1: 2-3 simple facts, and drawing is a major feature.
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Level 2: More complex facts, longer sentences and drawing is still a major feature.
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Level 3: Paragraph entry, more complex information like species and genus types, variations of plants, habitats, and geography.
Read
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Level 1: Includes lessons on letters & vocabulary, and books have very simple sentences.
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Level 2: Slighty more complex sentences and information, including introduction to concepts like the water cycle, and ecosystem relationships. Letter lessons are no longer available.
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Level 3: Only books that focus on more complex sentences, words, and information like keystone species, niches, etc.
Challenges.
Safety & Security
Because this product is for young children, design choices must be made in consideration of current privacy and security laws regarding chilren's use of digital media. To adhere to this legislation, onboarding requires parent participation, and the app would collect little to no data about its users.
Learning Levels
To create a tailored learning experience to an audience with varying needs, design decisions needed to be mindful of the scope of the project. Creating a method of organization for differing reading and play skills was key to appealing to as wide of an audience as possible.
Future Considerations.
User Testing
Because very little data would be collected from young users, user satisfaction would be measured through surveys sent to parent emails. These surveys would include questions about reading progress, creative exploration, and how well co-play integration functions. Observational studies would also be conducted to review how children of different ages interact with the user flows and navigating through the app. These studies would also assess the accuracy of skill level distribution among the different learning levels.
Additional Features
More features may be added to further encourage play outside the digital experience. Possible updates could include expanding journal function for written entries about plants and animals users find outside, and guided outdoor activities integrating local parks, trails, etc.