Making apps for kids: Part 2
Some lessons learned in the making of Quick Math Jr.
Welcome back! This is part 2 of our blog series on what we learned while researching and developing Quick Math Jr, a mathematics learning app for children aged 4 - 6.
In my first post I wrote about the need to minimise distracting material when designing apps for young children. In this follow up post, I’m going to discuss motivation.
So, you’ve made sure kids aren’t getting distracted by a bunch of bells and whistles, but how do you make sure your app is interesting enough to get kids playing it in the first place?
Just like big people, little people need to find something in a task that motivates them to want to continue with it. Motivation comes in two flavours; intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is when we perform a task because the task itself is enjoyable. Extrinsic motivation is when we perform a task in order to get some other reward.
Intrinsic motivation is the more powerful motivator, but extrinsic motivators are much easier to provide! We’ve all been tempted to fall back on candy-based bribery (an extrinsic motivator) whenever we’re trying to convince a reluctant human to do something they are not particularly inclined to.
However, consider the type of message we send when we rely on extrinsic motivation in a learning app. Kids already know that rewards are offered when the task itself is not inherently motivating. They might be rewarded with treats or money for completing chores, but they never get rewarded this way for things they enjoy doing, such as playing with their toys.
When we offer extrinsic rewards for learning something we are equating learning with a chore - an unpleasant thing which must be put up with in order to reap some other reward - and any value the child may have found in the task itself is completely overshadowed. This is not a desirable outcome.
So, where does this leave developers trying to create a compelling learning game? Are in-game rewards always a complete no-no?
In Quick Math Jr, we settled on a mix of intrinsic and small extrinsic motivators.
One way of helping kids this age to find a task intrinsically motivating is to make them feel like a part of the experience by offering them opportunities for personalisation and self-expression.
In Quick Math Jr. players create their own collection of monster characters, which then appear throughout the app. The aim here is to help kids feel like that they are a part of the “story”. Sure, the story in this case might be something as simple as monsters getting on or off a bus, but when the characters are their own and they control the action, a simple task suddenly becomes a lot more compelling. When we hear kids talking to their monsters as they play, we know we’ve tapped into their intrinsic motivation!
Of course the ‘story’ in this case also serves the dual purpose of helping to ground abstract mathematical principles. Children are much better at solving mathematic problems when the problems relate to their experiences in the real world. For example, keeping count as monsters arrive and leave a house is much more accessible for kids that then same problem presented in numerical form.
Quick Math Jr. also offers small, extrinsic rewards for kids to earn as they play. Since studies have found that external rewards can have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation, we decided to step very carefully here.
After a player completes a round of games, they can spin the prize wheel to earn one or two new parts for their monsters. These rewards are small, low-stakes, linked to the core game play and the intrinsic motivators, and are awarded for effort rather than progress. They also offer some random surprise, as new parts are revealed with each spin.
In this way we hope to add a little extra fun to the games without detracting from the intrinsic motivators for playing or separating out the “learning” from the “fun”!
In my next post I’ll continue on the topic of motivation and discuss the impact of game difficulty. Check back soon!
simonseeber reblogged this from getshinythings- simonseeber liked this
poromo liked this
getshinythings posted this