Have you ever been in a situation where you thought you were finished with a project, only to discover that you were just beginning? That’s what happened to me last year.
For the past 20 years, Splashworks has developed interactive media on behalf of prominent kids brands. For the last three years, we’ve been developing our own mobile apps, specifically designed to improve the quality of content offered to young users. One of these was Heart Street Market, a multi-cultural brand that lent itself to a rich digital experience.
After Heart Street Market’s launch, I thought we were done—but in actuality, the team had just embarked on a much longer journey. In November, I attended the “Dust or Magic’s Fall Institute,” a conference focused on incorporating child development knowledge into leading edge media. I presented Heart Street Market and received mixed reviews from the audience. They had questions about how the app qualified as educational media and about our credibility as educational developers.
Some in the audience failed to see how playing Heart Street Market helped children learn cognitive skills, reading/vocabulary, math, social skills, healthy habits, science or arts/culture. It was concluded that the app touched upon several subjects but failed to deliver learning in any meaningful way.
I realized that, although we had created something culturally resonant and visually beautiful — we still had work to do when it came to incorporating deeper learnings into content and game design.
The audience was also skeptical about Splashworks’ ability to deliver educational media and this tainted their perception of the app. While our team exhibited good instincts, it had spent the last twenty years operating outside this circle of children’s media developers. We had yet to establish a voice in the educational conversation.
While at the conference, I compiled a book list and when I got home, I started reading.
The first book was The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King. It’s the story of a pioneer in the telecommunications medium, who saw both the potential and the pitfalls of using television to communicate with children. Fred Rogers’ commitment to delivering the highest quality to his viewers is truly inspiring.
His vision was to use television to advance an early childhood educational agenda in the mainstream of popular culture. His work started the early education movement in America and he demonstrated that there was a demand for quality children’s television that persists to this day. In the study Learning at Home: Families and Educational Media Use in America* it states: “Decades of creating educational television seems to be paying off — most children get their educational media content from television.” In addition, it says, “Children from lower-income families are using educational TV at high rates.”
Fred Rogers followed the dictum “anything mentionable is manageable” and as a result he was fearless about tackling difficult subjects on the show, including childhood disabilities and topical events such as Robert Kennedy’s assassination. This approach gave his work an unprecedented authenticity.
His example remains relevant to us today as we tackle the digital world of mobile content, a medium that’s even more ubiquitous in children’s lives.
WORKING TOGETHER
Fred Rogers believed that content developers, brands, and parents should actively support each other’s efforts to ensure that children are exposed to quality material. It’s a precept I’ve come to strongly believe in as our studio moves forward in the field of educational entertainment.
Developers
Developers of digital content need to set time aside to gain a basic understanding of child development theory, with the objective of incorporating learnings into game design. They may need to carve out budgets for educational consultants and work together with them to establish academic objectives and a method for manifesting these in each interactive experience.
When it comes to kids, even a game that appears simple and colorful has implications for learning. It’s critical that we understand and explore these before we write a single line of code.
Brands
Popular brands have established connections to young audiences, and apps featuring their characters are likely to make their way onto children’s devices.
It behooves such mega brands to be even more responsible about the content and game play they offer. If a brand’s app is going to be in front of a child for lengthy periods of time, then they need to establish high standards for that product—from both a technical and an experiential point of view.
Such an approach will eventually reap brand rewards in the form of positive feedback from educational gatekeepers and parents.
Parents
Parents need to play an active role in selecting apps. They have the final say about what makes it on their children’s mobile devices. Parents should make themselves aware of the complexities of digital gameplay and child development.
They should select content carefully and be willing to support ethical developers by paying for downloads.
A LONGER JOURNEY
Improving the quality of children’s digital media will require a coordinated effort from all parties over a sustained period of time. Splashworks is already actively seeking to become part of the solution by understanding and incorporating cognitive learnings into our game designs.
As our studio moves forward on this journey, we realize it will require larger budgets and longer schedules as additional steps are incorporated into the process. It’s an investment that we believe will pay for itself—and even provide dividends. But more than that, it is the evolutionary step we are deeply committed to taking, an additional dimension that we believe in and want to provide for all our young users.
The next time I present one of our apps to an audience, I want to be able to tackle all their questions with the right answers.
* 2014, by The Joan Ganz Cooney Center
