Children are our future, therefore taking their education seriously is the main task of the grown-ups. A child learns fast and constantly: at the kindergarten, at school, at home. The appearance of mobile educational apps for children made the learning experience even funnier and more effective. Startups specializing in app development for kids appeared one by one offering parents and their children a wide range of mobile games available on both Android and iOS devices.
While building an app for kids might sound as amn piece of cake, in fact this tas is rather challenging and required the sound knowledge of child psychology and interests and a profound research. There are four basic criteria that define whether the app geared for educational purposes. They include the following aspects:
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Active involvement
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Engagement
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Meaningfulness
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Social aspect
Active involvement. It is harder to attract a child’s attention with a plain app. To involve a kid into a learning process you should add a gameplay that will be interesting and useful.
Engagement. If the app tells a child a story and encourage a kid to follow this story to the end by fulfilling various tasks and clear the levels, than the app has clearly succeeded in engaging the younger audience.
Meaningfulness. An app also should be meaningful and encourage a child to think and perform intellectual tasks. Different types of shooters does not require additional thinking, all the play dies is shooting the targets and hiding form the pursuers. Arcadas and puzzles on the contrary, will require some thinlung for solving the tasks.
Social aspect. Social integration is another important aspect. By allowing young users to communicate remotely with other kids or share their gaming and learning experience with friends and parents, you will encourage them to use your app more.
What’s the difference between app development for kids or adults?
One may ask what the difference between applications designed for adults and kids. The answer is clear. The main difference is the mentality of an adult and that of a child. The latter has weak critical thinking skills, children tend to accept facts at face value, they like to be praised and rewarded for their hard work. All these aspects need to be considered upon app development for kids.
Don’t forget that for children the challenge is as important as the result. Sure kids want to win in the game, but more importantly they want to enjoy their journey to the victory. Interesting characters, eye-catching design and simple navigation with other fancy features – are what every app for kids requires.
Another component worth mentioning is a feedback. When a child completes a level or solves a problem provide him or she with a little reward to commemorate their success. By getting small rewards child will want to continue playing with your app to collect even more precious virtual presents.
As children tend to trust others more than adults you have to keep it in mind. Your app has to provide verified facts and safe experiments. Don’t use complicated words or tasks that are hard to solve as this will kill the child’s motivation.
Upon app development you should also consider how old your target audience is. While apps for adults cover all age groups from 18 years old and above, the age range for children is much more versatile. For example, an app aimed at a toddler will be boring for a nine year old.