The project proposal

The target user we are aiming our product for are children between the ages of 8 and
10. We will be incorporating academic educational values which will be used within
an entertainment medium to produce a successful learning application, which will be
available through an online web recourse.

We have decided upon focusing the academic curriculum to science, biology in
particular. This has been previously highlighted as an area of development
necessary for this age group. Due to the fact that this age group will have a limited
attention span and willingness to learn; we have decided to incorporate a sense of
entertainment value. It will be animated, a focus heavily on visual leaning, though
user interaction. Our aim is that the children will recognise ideas, information and
concepts via recognition and repletion.

This is easily justified, as research shows that children of this age group struggle with
staying focused on the task at hand. They have a low level of reading ability, thus
needs to be easier for them to digest. Furthermore a subject area such as biology is
not perhaps the most grasping of learning areas and therefore and alternative
teaching approach is needed. We believe this will be a valuable learning resource for
the children who experience it, and hold their attention for the duration of the learning
material. This will be a much more affective learning approach, in comparison to
traditional teaching methods.

This piece of software will help the children, hopefully, they will be having so much
fun, interacting, and that it won't seem like work at all. Psychologically, it is proven
that when the user is enjoying their work , they are more productive and understand
things easier. It is less of a stress on the users working memory.
The learning objectives for the children is that they should understand the main
concepts all of human biology.

The user interface will be one that children will be able to relate to. The colours will
be bold and bright. We aim to fit the conventions of software for children, yet include
a good design element within this.
There will be a digital assistant, in the form of an animation in the corner of the
screen. He may react to the user's choices. The application is primarily going to be a
class test/information-based interactive learning experience. This may include radio
buttons. And a choice of three possible answers to questions. There will be three
levels and at the end of each level, the animated assistant will become more
animated, possibly even playing a movie or animation at the end of each level. To
add a competitive nature to help children excel their personal results against their
peers, there will be a ‘scoreboard’ of results, were users are able to input their name,
showing a score .Furthermore, dependant upon their personal score they will be able
to produce a ‘work of art’ at the end of the test, their colour pallet will be a direct
result of their test score; If they score a high mark their colour pallet will consist of a
broad range, however if their score is low, they will have a limited pallet of
colours/shapes to work with. This will be reflected, so that the children can be proud
of their score, as a direct result of reflection upon their personal art piece.