App Friday: Montessori Crosswords

by Moms With Apps on September 2, 2010

Welcome to App Friday, our weekly link exchange of family-friendly apps. This week we explore early childhood education with moveable alphabets and word building with Montessori Crosswords. L’Escapadou is a family design studio based in France. This homeschooling family found inspiration after the launch of the iPad with the belief that the iPad can be a great tool for learning and creativity. Judging from the success of their two titles, Draw With Stars and Montessori Crosswords, seems like they are right on!

What is your app about? This app was created after watching one of our daughters doing a Montessori activity involving a movable alphabet. The goal of this activity is to help kids develop their reading/writing skills :  pictures are shown and kids compose the corresponding words using the movable alphabet. The app is also about having fun with the iPad (on iPhone also in the next update!) : so we’ve carefully designed the app so that it is fun to use!

Why is it special? Based on the proven Montessori learning method, this app provides 3 words series that match the phonetic complexity of words so that kids can start with simple words. A standalone movable alphabet is also provided for the younger children who begin to play with letters. So this game is ideal for kids from 3 to 8 years (or more if they want to perfect their spelling skills). It is also special because of the fun and colorful animations/fireworks displayed every time a crossword is completed – animations which will be interactive in the next update due next week!

What’s in it for me? For App Friday SEPTEMBER 3rd, Montessori Crosswords (currently iPad) will be set to FREE on the iTunes App Store. In addition, Pierre (the developer) is setting his other app Draw With Stars  for iPhone and iPad to FREE for App Friday also. Download all of these apps from iTunes on September 3rd!

Related Apps? Our Moms With Apps developers were busy assembling their iPad content this week. Check out their list of over 20 family-friendly apps for iPad! Also, to compliment the Montessori word-building app with phonics and verbal skills, check out iSpy Phonics and Story Builder, also developed by Dads dedicated to helping their children (so many “World’s Greatest Dads” right here at Moms With Apps!). For speech-language focus, try ArtikPix, recently updated and released for free, with in app purchases.

App Friday Link Exchange: Our goal at Moms With Apps is to spread the word about family-friendly apps. Do YOU have a favorite app to share? Please participate in our link exchange and post it down below. Include the app name in the Link Title, your email, and a URL to the app. Thanks for your participation!

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Designing the User Experience of Your App

by Moms With Apps on September 1, 2010

Our feature this week is written by Pierre Abel, one of our Dad developers and founder of L’Escapadou (kids educational apps for the iPhone and iPad). Pierre shares his experience designing user interfaces, which are especially important in the success of apps for children. As the mobile app market matures and becomes more competitive, user interface design will stand out as a critical component for apps that resonate with kids and families. Yet another area for developers to do their homework! Thanks for the tips Pierre.

Before starting L’Escapadou with my family, I worked for several years as a user experience designer, and for this week I’d like to share some basic steps that can help you build more usable and successful apps. Basically, the goal is to gather information about your users to make the right choices when making design-related decisions, and not leave these decisions to chance.

Know Your Users
The first step is to know your users - user experience designers talk about  “personas”. The goal is to define types of users and have a clear picture of each of them. For example, in an app for kids, there are usually two kinds of personas: kid and parent (kid is the primary persona who plays the game, and parent buys the app and may also play the game with their kids). The description of a persona should look real; for example, a kid persona may start like this: Sophia is 6 years old and lives in San Francisco. She loves to play and have fun with friends and her dog. She has a little sister who is 3 years old. She loves pink. She attends a Montessori school, and …

User Goals
Once you have defined your personas, you should define the goals your users want to achieve using your app.  If you can’t articulate answers to this question correctly, the design of your digital product will be loose and users will feel lost.  Clearly defining user goals and their priorities allows you to give a direction to the product design. When designing a kids app, the primary goal of a kid’s persona is usually to have fun and can also be focused on a specific interest (e.g. dinosaurs), whereas the parents’ goal will often be offer their child a game that will help them develop their skills (e.g. spelling) and/or make them happy.

Scenarios
Scenarios are short stories that describe how your app is used.  It is the foundation of design, but it is not visual yet . Of course, scenarios support the user goals you have defined and also take the characteristics of targeted personas  into account. For example, in our crossword game, a quick scenario is “Sophia sees a picture and a movable alphabet, she tries to write the word corresponding to the picture. Once she has completed the word, something visually pleasant and interactive is displayed”.

Prototypes
Based on the scenarios you have defined, you can now build a prototype integrating your scenarios. When you are wondering about a design decision, always check personas description and goals to make an informed decision. At the beginning stay away from the computer and try to do everything on paper to iterate fast !

Test and iterate!
Once the prototype is ready, you can test with your targeted users and see what’s wrong. Look carefully how users use the product and refine your prototype accordingly (you might also need to iterate on personas/goals/goals according to your findings). For example in Montessori Crosswords, we’ve changed the graphics four times , and did many iterations to make the application usable, simple and fun !

I hope that this short introduction to user experience design has shown how it can be a powerful framework to design your app. Please share examples of apps you’ve seen with successful user interfaces in hopes that it adds to this discussion as the platform emerges.

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Get Your iPad Up and Running With Family-Friendly Apps

August 31, 2010

Are you considering an iPad purchase for your family? If so, the developers at Moms With Apps are creating content to make the iPad shine.  In this post we highlight apps that have made a big impression with the kids and families of our community. We hope this starting point illustrates how the iPad can be an interactive tool for people of all ages! [...]

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How the Creativity Crisis Presents a New Chapter in Mobile App Development

August 27, 2010

This post summarizes the three-part series recently published by Ann My Thai, Assistant Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Andy Russell from Launchpad Toys. In the series, they discuss the Creativity Crisis, theories of creative learning, and the role technology can play in fostering creativity. Lorraine Akemann, Editor at Moms [...]

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App Friday: Sleeping With The Laundry: Notes from the Mommy Track

August 27, 2010

Welcome to App Friday, our weekly link exchange of family-friendly apps. This week is a tribute to Motherhood through the voice of Margee Moore, author of the iPhone/iPad app Sleeping With the Laundry: Notes from the Mommy Track. If you’ve ever found yourself flustered after a long day of parenting, Margee’s upbeat yet down-to-earth message will put things in [...]

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Market Like a Mom: 5 Steps for Successful Social Media Blogger Outreach

August 24, 2010

Our feature this week is written by Margee Moore, author of the 5-star rated book app, Sleeping With the Laundry: Notes from the Mommy Track, the first narrative book app by a mom. Margee discusses the remarkable revolution of mom-style marketing, and offers specific tips for getting it right. Moms do a lot of things right. We develop [...]

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App Friday: MathGirl Number Garden

August 20, 2010

Welcome to App Friday, our weekly link exchange of family-friendly apps. This week we are improving our counting skills with MathGirl Number Garden, just in time for Back to School. The mother/daughter team behind the MathGirl series hit it out of the park when Apple picked them for New & Noteworthy right after launch.  How wonderful is this app? [...]

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A is for Apps: Back to School at Moms With Apps

August 18, 2010

The Back to School season is here, and the developers at Moms With Apps have been extremely busy creating content to help us transition into another year of learning. We are SO excited to share this selection of interactive, educational apps for your iDevices! MATH Practice math by grade with Kids Math Fun Master word problems [...]

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Apps as a Learning Tool for Education

August 17, 2010

As back to school approaches, the topic of learning takes center stage. Lynn Rasmussen; parent, app developer, and creator of math apps Arithmaroo and MathGirl Number Garden, offers her insight on how characteristics of apps can open up new pathways for learning and new resources for traditional education systems. Apps offer an entirely new medium for education. App [...]

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App Friday: Pocket Zoo with Live Animal Cams

August 13, 2010

Welcome to App Friday, our weekly link exchange of family-friendly apps. This week we are taking a field trip to the ZOO! Come and explore Pocket Zoo with Live Animal Cams; an amazing way to see, hear and learn all about your favorite animals straight from your iPhone. The Mom and Dad developers and their team [...]

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