In case you haven’t noticed, most of today’s young children know how to operate mobile technology better than most adults. More and more parents are discovering that there are fun and educational apps that can entertain children, but also help them to learn something new and exciting, sometimes without even realizing it. So, if you are on a mission to develop an app directed toward younger audiences not only will you find that competition is stiff, but that you have to keep kids and parents in mind during the development.
Bring Out Your Inner Kid
The key to successful mobile app development for children is to think like a child, which for some game designers isn’t hard. You want to be sure that your app will appeal to the child with a great design, easy to use controls and characters or actions that kids can relate to. Fun colors and cool characters make for a game or app that kids will want to explore and use all the time. Take a look at some of the top games for kids as rated by Parenting.com to get some ideas as to what kinds of apps kids are truly interested in playing. Remember that you want to keep the age of your target audience in mind when designing your game, as nothing is worse than a pre-teen’s game made for toddlers.
Keep Your Kids in Mind
Whether or not you have children, you want to think like a parent when you are developing your app, after all who do you think pays for the app! While some parents allow their children to download mobile apps that are simply for pleasure, you want to appeal to moms and dads by letting them know their children will be getting something out of using this app. Making the app fun for a kid is necessary, but you want to educate them in some way as well. There are plenty of qualities in an app that parents search for before they allow their children to download it, just take a look at How to Choose Video Game Apps for Your Kids by AgingTech for ideas on what parents look for.
Additionally, you want to keep in mind that most parents want the content of their child’s app to be properly rated, as parental controls are set on most mobile devices. It can help to gain some information on parental controls and what they permit and don’t permit a child to do, as this will help you to create a boundary for your mobile app. My Mobile Watchdog is just one site that can be used to get a better understanding of how these programs work for parents and their kids.
Developing a mobile app for kids can be fun and rewarding for anyone, but rather than pleasing just the app user, you have to please their parents too. This can be doubly as hard, especially if you don’t take the time to learn from apps that are successful and those that don’t seem to get much attention.
Image Source: http://www.iptv.org/classroom/story.cfm/story/9702/ed_20120719_choosing_quality_educational_apps
Mobile App Development for Kids
