The design process and experience of the ipad using "hand-painted artists"

This is a practical case of how to design a child, there are thinking, practice, as well as summary, sharing out is to do product design peers, do children's application of peer experience reference, but also to care for the growth of children parents recommend our application: hand-painted artists. This is a gift that is full of sincerity and gives to the children.

Aura Marker Studio is a mobile application production studio at the end of 2012. There are now 6 members, 4 of whom are from Huawei, with more than 7 years of work experience in product design, interface design, ios/android, and backend servers. We believe that the combination of design, technology and fun can create many good mobile applications to enrich and improve people's lives and make the world a better place.

On the January 22, our first application, hand-painted artist, was online at the App Store, a gift for children to paint. On the day of the launch, the ipad ranked 28th in the China Education category and the top seller in the 31st place. On the 5th day of the line, Apple was officially recommended, appearing in the 4th position of new products recommended in the Education category. And these are in the absence of any media channel marketing to do.

The original intention of making hand-painted artists was that, because one of the founders of the Aura Marker Studio Team, who was already the father of two children, was deeply grieved by the present poor children's applications and products and began to dedicate the first product to the children.

The first is the application of the direction of selection, which took a relatively long time, nearly 2 months, analysis of the top-ranked child applications at home and abroad. We found that now most of the children's applications are audio-reading e-books, puzzle games, or learn the use of words and letters, and let children paint the application is rarely done excellent, mostly shoddy, even if the charges will be ugly interface, operation is difficult to use, It is not even possible to achieve interest in drawing interest and free creation of children. So we chose painting as the direction.

After selecting the direction, we began to study how to create a child with a painting application is the best?

We have communicated with two or three professional children's drawing educational institutions, also carefully observed their children in the process of learning the characteristics of painting, of course, we are also from the child's growth, we found that children are from observation and imitation began to learn, if the children can provide a lot of carefully drawn, a variety of styles of painting, Will improve the children's aesthetic and diverse thinking. And all of the current painting applications, basically from a white paper, some provide some fan painting, but also let the children fill color, the child's creativity is in fact not stimulated and guided. I can't learn how to be good at painting.

As a result, we have crafted 35 examples of pictures, and creative research and development of the image playback technology, so that children can see how a painting is drawn out, you can feel different drawing process and order, more can be repeated viewing.

It is not enough to let the child observe, but also should let them do, so we also developed a simulation of the real paper stack effect, so that children can be free copy, and at any time to turn to view the example diagram. These operations are very practical and can only be manipulated by experience in life. In order for the children to draw the painting is beautiful, we carefully selected 9 kinds of commonly used and color with a good color, children do not need to have a very high degree of sensitivity to color can create a very beautiful painting.

Children's creativity is unimaginable, if only a rigid copy, the same will constrain their creativity. Therefore, we also specialize in the provision of a number of stickers, so that children can be used in their own painting two times to create. It's not just simple enough to inspire creativity, it's also fun.

Of course, the child's learning process needs feedback. The child has not yet formed a self-awareness and judgment, so feedback needs to come from outside. In the same way, we spent a lot of time developing a fuzzy evaluation technique for copying, which can be used to give a vague evaluation after a child completes a copy creation, encouraging the child to draw. If you can get 3 stars, you can also get a sticker.

Designing for a child is more difficult than making a design for an adult. Because children need to be fun, and these have long been the indifference of adults ... The main interface of hand-painted artists we made 3 big changes to get our memories of fun back. Finally, it's a style. All the interface elements are super large, the color is bright and warm, the shape is safe, these will give the child a comfortable feeling. In the interface also uses many dynamic elements, so that the entire interface in the absence of operation input, but also vivid, rather than dead state.

In order to be more fun, we even designed a different note for 9 colors, when the child in the choice of color, but also the sense of hearing, the use of fingers in the rapid painting, there will be fingers on paper friction.

In order to make the children have a simpler and more intuitive painting experience, we spent a month or two to develop a technology that can change the thickness of lines immediately according to finger pressure. In this way, the child in the depiction of lines, you can gently touch the screen with the hand, when you want to apply a large color, as long as the simple increase of finger touch screen pressure can be. This is as fun as the real feeling of painting with a finger on the paint.

It can be said that we have never done the application of children, but we use the love of the father to understand and perceive the characteristics of children, with nearly six months of time to create a hand-painted artist such a child application. This application, also truly embodies our philosophy: Design + technology + fun = Beautiful Application

Finally, we can sum up, to give children to do the design, there are several points to consider:

　　1: Be Full of fun:

This is the first thing to be guaranteed. The best learning condition of a child is in the "playing" scene. When the content of learning is fun, it can stimulate the interest of children, so that they are full of curiosity, and then take the initiative to explore, and focus. To do this, first of all, from the product design concept to start, the product's core mechanism must be able to attract children, to impress the interests of children. In addition, it is to make the whole application alive, rather than dead.

　　2: Give the child timely and positive feedback:

Children always need feedback to adjust and improve their perceptions of themselves. Therefore, in the application, should give the child timely, positive, moderate feedback. The feedback includes the visual, auditory, and all things acquired.

　　3: Intuitive human-Computer Interaction mode

Children's life experience is very scarce, it is difficult to recognize the abstract content and shape. So, when designing a child, you need to design as much as possible with the shape of the object you perceive in your child's life. If you are a 3-7-year-old preschool Child, it is best not to use text in the application, so that children can be judged only by using graphics.

　　4: The interface for children's size/shape/color

Preschool children, in the control of their own body is not very flexible, although they are very clever, but it is difficult to fine operation, therefore, it is necessary to the interface of the size of the elements designed to facilitate the use and operation of children. In the shape aspect, also uses the rounded angle modelling as far as possible, the prominent security. In the color aspect, the child in the visual perception on the bright, the color saturation is high, therefore must discard the adult color, creates a vivid scene.

　　5: No less animation/sound effects

Children's perceptual system is very rich, if adults can be in a long time in a single visual or auditory situation, and children in this situation is difficult to maintain long-term focus. In fact, it's not easy to have preschool children stay focused for 5-10 minutes. Therefore, it is necessary to enrich children's perception through multi-channel interaction, so that they can focus on drawing a picture. Animation, sound effects have become a necessary element in children's applications. In fact, when we were making hand-painted artists, we asked our professional audio studio to help us achieve up to 40 + sound design and production.

Now, hand-painted artist This application is not only parents and children like, but also many designers/art professional friends love, and thus we feel, can impress children, in fact, can impress adults. As long as it is full of sincerity and fun.