Developing a mobile application is always backed by a great idea. And, to bring that idea to a beautiful reality is what we work on.
We all need to develop “The BEST” apps, but we need to be prepared enough with the groundwork before initiating with the same.
And, when the app is focused on the kids whose emotions, behavior, expectations, and attitude differ from age to age, gender to gender, becomes tricky.
Boys’ attraction towards the digital world is different compared to girls. Also, preschoolers and teens react differently to different digital platforms.
Hence, we cannot just initiate with designing and developing the app for kids without gathering enough data about the kids.
Table of Contents
How Can Kids Learn Through Mobile Apps?
There are numerous ways mobile apps can be used to educate children. Here are some examples:
Teaching The Fundamentals
Basic skills like reading, writing, and math can be taught with mobile apps. Interactive games, quizzes, and other activities that make learning fun and exciting may be included in these apps.Trying Out New Things
Kids can learn about new subjects like Art, history, and science through mobile apps. Kids can use these apps to explore and learn more about the world around them by participating in interactive simulations, virtual tours, and other activities.Enhancing Classroom Instruction
Mobile apps can reinforce what is being learned in the classroom by providing additional practice and a review of essential concepts. Interactive exercises, quizzes, and other activities can be included in these apps to help kids learn what they’re learning in school.Increasing One’s Capacity For Creativity And Problem-Solving
By allowing kids to make things like Art, music, and other projects, mobile apps can help them become more creative and better able to solve problems. Kids can find tools and resources in these apps that help them think creatively and express themselves.
Overall, mobile apps can help teach children. They can be a fun and exciting way to learn new skills and study new subjects, reinforce what students learn in the classroom and help them develop essential skills like creativity and problem-solving. Kids can use mobile devices to support their education and reach their full potential with the right apps and resources.
How to Research on Developing Mobile Apps for Kids?
Mobile app development always needs research. And, we know attracting kids is not an easy task. So, to make sure we develop the best app for kids, we need to,
1. Understand Who will Install Your App
Whenever we develop an app, we consider the audience in mind.
But, here while developing a mobile app for kids, we need to ask following questions to ourselves:
- Who will check out your kids’ app in the Play Store or App Store?
- Will they be kids or their parents?
- Who will judge your apps?
The reason to ask these questions is that, most of the educational or learning apps for kids are researched and then downloaded by the parents. Also, when it comes to apps that encourages children to play, parents take an extra care that it relates to their kids’ mindset and routine behavior.
2. Determine what age of the children will use your app
Well, age plays a very important role while planning to develop a mobile app for kids. Every kid wants to learn, explore, experiment and experience something unique, creative, attractive and even challenging.
There are various age criteria to be taken care of:
- Age group – 3 – 5 years: This is an age group where toddlers love to explore colors, music, rhymes, some small sort of interaction, etc. This age group consists the kids of preschool and to develop apps for them that attracts them with colors.
Did you check out the app – iColourIt
The above one is an iOS app, but it allows the toddlers to color their favorite fruits, animals, flowers, shapes, etc.
- Age group – 5 – 10 years: This age group expects more learning activities like planting, grocery shopping, mathematical tables, etc.
- Age group – 10 -15 years: This age group looks for the apps that attracts them visually first and then look for educational stuffs that makes it easy for them to learn and grasp compared to the class education. In fact, here there are more chances of looking for more games that allow them to set their own rules, play with oppositions and even with friends, online.
So, looking at the age groups, you can design and develop your mobile app for kids.
How to Develop Mobile Apps for Kids?
Now, we are done with researching aspects of developing a mobile app for kids. Now, let’s focus on how we can design and develop popular apps that not only attracts the kids, but also, help them grow their concentration, mental balance, and quick learning.
1.Focus on Attractive UX/UI Design
The first interaction with kids begin with attractiveness.
Toddlers are attracted towards bright colors and love them a lot.
Same way, the teens are attracted towards creativity.
Hence, attractive user interface needs to be our 1st and foremost preference while developing apps for kids.
But, hope you’ve not forgotten that we already discussed that we need to consider the person who is going to download the app in mind. So, designing the app with appropriate UI becomes a necessity.
Also, the success of our app does not lie in just its download. The children need to be loving the app, learning from it and sharing it with their friends as well. So, user experience is equally important for the kids’ mobile apps.
How you can inculcate amazing user experience (UX) in your kids mobile app?
Make sure you focus on all the following areas:
- The app should not break down at any point of time, it will disappoint the child
- The app should be easily adaptable by the preschoolers or teens
- The app needs to have easy navigation
- The app has to be easy enough to be shared on the social media profiles (especially by the parents to others)
- Whether the app is a game or an educational activity, it needs to be in very easy language
- The app needs to focus on allowing the kids to grasp positive emotions that encourages parents to share it more
- More interactive gestures, emoticons, etc. can be utilized
So, the idea behind focusing on UI/UX in developing mobile apps for kids is that it increases the downloads and reviews by parents and even by kids. Also, it can outsmart your competition easily.
What Considerations Should Be Made When Creating A Children’s Educational Mobile App?
Creating a safe, engaging, and effective educational mobile app for kids can be a difficult and complex process that requires careful consideration of various factors. This article will discuss some of the most important things to consider when making a kids’ educational mobile app.
1. Learning Objective
Learning objectives are an additional consideration when developing an educational mobile app for kids. The app’s clear learning objectives should reflect the target audience’s educational objectives. Addition, subtraction, and multiplication might be examples of learning objectives in an app designed to teach fundamental math skills. Similarly, the learning objectives of a social studies app might concentrate on civics, geography, and history. The app can help kids learn the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in school and beyond by focusing on specific learning goals.
2. Interactivity And Engagement
When creating an educational mobile app for kids, interactivity and engagement are also essential considerations. The app should be interactive and engaging to keep children interested and motivated to learn. This could include features like games, puzzles, and quizzes that let kids practice and use their new skills. Children will stay engaged and motivated to learn if the app is fun and interactive.
3. Safety And Privacy
Safety and privacy are also important considerations when creating an educational mobile app for kids. The app’s security and privacy features should shield children from inappropriate content, cyberbullying, and other online dangers. Parental controls, content filtering, and secure logins are examples. You can make an app that parents feel comfortable allowing their children to use by placing safety and privacy first.
4. Parental Involvement
When creating an educational mobile app for kids, parental involvement is another essential aspect to consider. Parents should be able to participate in their children’s education through the app’s progress tracking and feedback features. This could include features like achievement badges, progress reports, and parent notifications when a child completes an activity or lesson. You can make the learning environment for children more supportive and collaborative by involving parents in the process.
5. Tech Stack
When developing a children’s educational mobile app, technical considerations are crucial. The app should be made to work on various platforms and devices and have suitable security measures to stop hackers or other security breaches. This might include data encryption, safe data storage, and regular app updates to keep the app safe and current.
In conclusion, developing an educational mobile app for children necessitates careful consideration of several aspects, such as age-appropriateness, learning objectives, user interface design, interactivity and engagement, privacy and safety, parental involvement, and technical considerations. You can create educational app for Kids that is a safe, effective, and engaging learning tool that helps kids learn the skills and knowledge they need by considering these factors.
What is gamification?
So, let’s have a simpler definition to gamification here in developing apps for kids – Gamification here means to add such gaming elements like point scoring, self-developing rules to play, competition and much more that attracts the children.
Now, let’s understand how to make sure gamification is taken care in your apps for kids.
Create Playful App Environment
While developing an app for preschoolers, the app environment needs to be such that it have the animals pictures, colors, and even engagement that encourages the toddlers to do it more often.
While developing an app for teens, it becomes imperative to make sure there are many educational stuffs portrayed with playful elements that makes easy for them to grasp.
Create Competition in the App
Kids love to compete and being compared.
Creating an app for kids need to be focused on how it creates competition for the kids with their friends. They love to know how they perform compared to their friends. So, creating competition, pointing out scores on the scoreboard, having daily, weekly or monthly tournaments among friends, announcing winners, getting rewards or points, etc. All these attract the children more towards the app.
Allow Them to Create Their Own Profile
Personalization in the kids’ mobile app is like the cherry on the cake.
Kids love to read, write and hear their name when they open any app.
For that purpose and also, to create the playful environment, creating the profile for kids make them give a feel of being an adult like their parents.
If the kids are preschoolers, then the profile can be created by the parents and if they are the teens, then you bet, the way they will create their own profiles.
Welcome Them in the App
Once, they are done with creating their profile, the app can welcome the kids as and when they open the app.
Hearing their own name gives a personalized sense to the kids. Also, when they win any activity, accolades can be served by announcing their names. This is even more attractive sense of feeling.
Educate Them About the App
Looking at the attractive design and shapes of your app, parents or teens might download your app. But, how will they come to know about how to use the app?
For this, we need to have tutorials, tooltips on each element and as much information as we can share through highly easy to grasp language.
Allow Them to Interact with the App
Interactivity is the core requirement of the kids.
Adding app elements such as 3D effects, attractive pictures, sound, greetings, etc. are highly adaptable by the kids of any age.
Whether you are developing an Android or iOS app for kids, you need to make sure that it is the best one among your competitors.
How to Make Money from Your Kids App?
Like we discussed earlier, the person who will download and install the app will differ based on the age criteria.
And, when it comes to paying for something, children cannot convince the parents on what is right and what is wrong for them.
So, it is always the best idea to go for a paid subscription approach. Let parents decide whether paying for such educational apps will be fruitful or not.
Also, we can introduce Ebooks, practical educational sessions (audio & video) and much more to attract the parents to pay for the subscription that help their child grow.
Moral of the Story
Developing an Android or iOS app for kids requires a lot of in-depth research and knowledge on how to make the app attractive for children as well as for parents.
What are your thoughts on the same?
