I am a co-creator of Mobile Montessori, a collection of educational apps for preschoolers. I've designed over 80 different applications since 2009 and we continue to maintain and improve them today. Activities for children require easy navigation and self-correction, even if they cannot read. Designing for this age group allows for much creativity with colors and layout. To date over two million children use the apps I helped design. It's a privilege to be a part of a child's basic education they will continue to build upon for years afterwards.
Since the beginning of this project my goal was to create Montessori inspired activities for the iPad that closely resemble the physical materials children and teachers were already familiar with. A digital version would also allow for unique enhancements including animations, audio instructions and feedback, and a subtle score card for parents and teachers to evaluate the child's progress.
To teach children how to represent fractions numerically I designed activities that used animations and recorded audio to help them correlate the divided sections of a circle to the written numbers. To make the activity more appealing I included a retro style keypad with a haptic-type feel (haptics weren't around yet) that was fun for kids to type with.
It was quite a challenge to present to children both the relative size of the planets and their distances from the sun. If everything was shown to scale, the planets would have been too small to see at all. My solution was to display them via two separate scales on the same solar map so children could learn both concepts on a single screen.
For geography apps I created close replicas of the physical Montessori puzzle maps with two types of puzzles, one where the child locates the country or state that matches a blinking one on the map, and a more advanced one where the child searches for the state or country that matches the name shown at the top. For children that cannot read they can simply touch the name to hear it aloud.
Icon design is critical to attract customers and quickly communicate what the app can do. Bright colors can identify with activities for children, and the wood texture speaks to those with experience with Montessori materials for teaching.
Animations help children retain the concepts they are learning, however the challenge is to present them in a way that's on excessive so the emphasis remains on the educational concept. I have designed hundreds of these subtle animations to improve engagement without deviating from the main objective.
