Abstract

It has been common these days that young children use tablets (as well as smartphones and other devices with touch screens) in their early education. This phenomenon raises an important question regarding the most effective ways to deliver contents to these young children. One of the ways to dose is through the use of interactive technology. This type of technology can help children speed up their learning process and balance interactive learning with other activities such as social skills and sports.

To take advantage of the growing market for childhood education apps, especially in Indonesia market, BINUS Creates together with the study program of Game and Technology (GAT) BINUS University, decided to develop Lopi dan Kawan-Kawan (Lopi and Friends), educational mobile game application for young children.

The Challenge

With the target players of young children between 3 to 5 years old, it was then becoming a challenge for us to develop an application that let children play the game as well as learn at the same time. The solution is to develop the contents that consisted of 5 (five) mini educational games; recognize letters, write simple words, find a way, draw shapes, draw numbers, and one bonus game of coloring pictures. Another challenge was the game direction. Since the end user is young children, voice over and music is more preferable than written instructions. Therefore, playful characters with kids voice over became the main features in the game making.

How We Helped

After defining the aims and parameters of the mobile game, BINUS Creates, with the team of Game and Technology (GAT), poured the concepts into design document. Game design document (GDD) was needed to guide developers in the game creation. GDD provide the details of the game, starts from the assets (the figures, image/characteristics, narration/talks, and background music), and step-by-step of the game, like how to enter the game, condition when winning or losing, choosing the game, level up, gimmicks, and so on.

Here, colorful and fun animals became the main characters to guide young children to learn while playing game. After assets of characters were already defined, we added voice over and coding the game. To make sure everything was aligned with GDD, we often cross-checked the games process again if anything was missing or needed improvements.

Impact

Learning is important. It is a fun activity if you can learn while playing, too! The only thing that you should is just playing! Educational mobile game can bring good process for every young children to learn without leaving his/her utmost activity that is playing. With educational mobile it helps them to escalate the learning process in the digital era.