It’s a huge challenge to find media that is constructive and empowering for our kids. Enter Tinybop.
This article is NOT actually about Brooklyn based Tinybop, home of the Human Body educational app for kids (which has already sold more than 4.9 million copies for the iPad and iPhone.)
This article is about how founder and CEO Raul Gutierrez thinks.
Gutierrez is an entrepreneur with a 20-year history in technology and the arts. He is a gifted writer and a world class photographer. (Don’t take my word for it, look for yourself.) He lives and creates at the intersection of visual design, multi-generational pop culture, cutting edge technology, and family. When you engage Gutierrez in a conversation, the first thing you notice is how he moves effortlessly back and forth between wide-ranging conceptual spaces, breaking down the siloing of ideas and exploring the interplay of each on the other.
As parents, we all think long and hard about how much screen time to allow our children. What media, applications and music are appropriate for them. What lessons they are learning from the relentless drumbeat of marketing messages aimed squarely at them. Its a huge challenge to find media that is constructive and empowering for our kids. Enter Tinybop.
♦◊♦
Raul Gutierrez was born in Mexico, grew up in Texas and lives in New York City. I met him at Tinybop’s Brooklyn office, a small space jammed with workstations, and boasting a panoramic view of the East River and Manhattan beyond. Gutierrez had just dropped his boys off at school. He had that apologetic bustling energy that all parents have when trying to shift gears from child time to work time. It has a familiar feel for any of us with kids.
But for Gutierrez, part of the joy of his job is that he intentionally brings his children’s energy with him. He doesn’t park it at the door. He invites it into the process of making apps for kids. As part of Tinybop’s creative team process, Gutierrez is tracking generations of pop culture, the implications of interactive media, notions of the value of conversation and the importance of children slowing down to explore the little moments amidst the tumult of our hectic instant-gratification culture.
It is this kind of layered complex thinking that is absolutely necessary if we are to engage the full potential of digital learning for kids.
|
It is this kind of layered complex thinking that is absolutely necessary if we are to engage the full potential of digital learning for kids. This is why Gutierrez and Tinybop are creating some of the most thoughtful and thought provoking educational apps in the industry.
Here’s Gutierrez’s thoughts on designing educational apps for kids, in his own words:
“There is a lot of research that says very young children need tactile things,” says Gutierrez. “Kids younger than two will watch a screen because its moving, but it will not give them the cognitive building blocks they need, so having something simple like a set of physical wooden blocks, something manual, is a better experience for young kids cognitively. It’s about the physics of the everyday. At that age, kids are still trying to figure out the permanence of objects. So there are good arguments that iPads are not right for very young kids. Later on? Touchscreens are a medium like any other medium that can be used for good or bad.”
“In the vast majority of educational apps, the thinking is still in a web context or a television context, in which the interactions are really point and click or passive, where kids are sitting watching the screen waiting for something to happen. But tablet computers are not just screens, they contain motion sensors and cameras and microphones and a lot more. We have an opportunity to use this new technology to teach kids by modeling the world and to embed rich interactions that prompt learning through play. That’s what were trying to do. “
“You can interest kids with a lot of loud music or a lot of animation and so on, but I’d argue that a lot of that is junk food, its hyper stimulation.”
|
“Its not hard to get kids to engage tablets, because you already have a sticky medium. You can always grab attention with a lot of loud music, flashy animation and so on, but I’d argue that a lot of that is junk food, its hyper stimulation. It a metabolic rhythm sped up all out of proportion with kids’ natural rhythms… A lot of poorly made children’s TV is super fast; full of speedy cuts and lot of treacle music, and kids who are fed this get into this unhealthy state of not being able to look away waiting for their next quick fix. This kind of media holds attention but is empty and airless. But I believe there’s another way, with intriguing design, with good storytelling, with a point of view that is maybe a little bit weird, you can draw kids in, without the bam bam bam pace. And once kids get into that slower rhythm, they will slow down and explore. Its like if you’re walking in the woods and your kid asks ‘where are we going’ and you say, ‘nowhere, we’re just walking.’ They might resist at first, but with enough time, they slow down and start exploring. Eventually they might see a trail of ants, and then they’ll spend a hour just looking at that.”
“The world is endlessly fascinating for kids, when they look at it closely enough. Slowing down kids so they will actually pause, look, and consider is a big design goal. When you first land on the Human Body the only interaction is an eyeball is following you around—one little simple tiny dot following you And then the kid has to figure out how to navigate and where to turn on the various systems. That’s a very different kind of design than you might expect as adult. When you’re designing an e-commerce site for an adult for example, you’re trying to minimize friction. You’re trying to get adults to move as quickly as possible from thought to purchase, to go down the funnel and all that stuff.
“With kids, the friction is the fun part.”
“A lot of times parents will get the app and they won’t understand what’s happening. They’re expecting a little text bubble that comes up that says, ‘the esophagus does this.’ But we’re not designing for parents. We’re designing for kids. We want kids to be intrigued enough to keep going back and exploring. And hopefully those explorations spark questions, so they go back to their parents and there’s a loop that happens where they say, ‘what’s going on here?'”
“We know that learning is imbedded in the interactions, when kids drag white blood cells to attack the bacteria for instance, but still we know that many parents want more context, so for each of our apps, we provide a free downloadable parents guide in the hope that it will encourage conversation. Our goal is not to give didactic answers, our goal is to get kids to ask questions.”
♦◊♦
A brief note on visual design at Tinybop.
Tinybop’s small office, (soon to get larger) is packed with children’s books dating back to the 1920’s. It is a carefully selected library of the most beautifully designed, visually engaging and yes, often weird children’s books ever published. The legacy of children’s literature is a touchstone for Tinybop’s designers and animators. Tinybop has rejected the formulaic visual styles of modern animated entertainment and is instead tapping into the golden age of children’s book illustration and design.
Tinybop’s second app (which I have seen glimpses of but am forbidden to reveal any details about) is due May 1st in the Apple App Store. But I can tell you this. The subject, which is not the Human Body, is very exciting and the illustration style is amazing.