UX/UI & Branding
Goober is a prototype of an educational application to teach kids to speak a second language and learn to differentiate between the languages & to help parents understand how to teach their children.
Target Audience
The application will be targeted towards parents and their toddlers, ages 2-6 from bilingual families interested in teaching their children their mother tongue. It will most likely be used by a sequential bilingual child- meaning they draw from their knowledge with one language to learn the second as this is the most common way that children learn and the easiest to pass down.
Limitations
Limitations may include not having a full application complete. Instead, I’m going to focus on just doing the main pages as an example of how the application will be structured and designed. The mode of delivery will be an application prototype created on Adobe XD. Xd also has certain limitations when it comes to animations and sound, so the final delivery might be an edited video of the prototype with edit on after effects.
Process
I will start by focusing on some sort of educational plan as a base for the iterations. Then I want to focus on different UI’s to determine what would best suit a child and their experience. I will also look into different color pallets, illustration styles, typography pairing, and different name and logo ideas to tie everything together. I have also come up with a backup story for the characters to give them a purpose to the storytelling and educational plan.
Final Rationale
Goober is a language learning application for children. The main objective is that it's simple and straightforward to use. The major changes to the app were the “lesson plan”. Originally I wanted to essentially teach kids by learning a “conversational” sentence, however after some thought, for my target audience, it would be better for kids to learn single words at first, and as they progress throughout the application the more difficult and challenging it will get. I chose to do just the first level because other than that it would just keep repeating itself. When thinking of different formats I did think of an iPad as well, however, I thought a phone application would be more accessible to parents to be able to hand off to their children. I added an audio feature as well. This allows the kids to pick up the words easier and be able to recollect. Ideally, there would also be a voice-activated option, where if they say a certain word it would advance them to the next level. The first two levels of the lesson have suggestive arrows to guide the user and teach them how the application works. The illustration's styles were chanced as well. The texture was taken off and replaced with a subtle gradient to add depth but not distract the user from the main focus and usability. The last change to the application is that of adding stars as a form of advancement and allowing the user to feel accomplished and encouraged to continue the lessons.