Alif Baa Taa World
Growing up, I wish there was a platform that facilitated learning the Arabic language in a simple and child friendly way. My exposure to the Arabic language was once a week for a maximum of one hour. There is a gap in the Arabic learning experience for children, and Alif Baa Taa World aims to fill that gap. Alif Baa Taa World aims to make learning Arabic whimsical, friendly, and fun for kids.
Alif Baa Taa World’s target audience are two sets of audiences. The first intended audience is children, ages 4 and above. The second intended audience is parents/guardians. We recognize that learning a new language isn’t an endeavor that should be taken solo. So while Alif Baa Taa World is geared towards children with its visuals and experience, parents/guardians have access to all of their progress and stats, so that they can supplement their learning.
01
The Process
The goal when thinking about this project was to create an experience that would be appealing to children and make it easy for parents/guardians to get their children to use the platform consistently. The less the program feels like a chore, the more they’ll stay active in learning the language and make good progress. The color palette, font, and visuals were intentionally selected so that it looks and feels like a program that is geared towards children and a younger audience.
This proposed solution aims to use modules and games that focus on the different skills when it comes to learning a new language: speaking, writing, and reading. Users can aim to increase their comprehension skills by tackling modules and games that target these specific skills. Alif Baa Taa World will track the progress of users as they progress through their modules and hit milestones and achievements as they play different games to build and refine their skills. Parents/guardians have full access to their usage history to ensure they are staying on track and there aren’t any problems they are facing.
Wanting to keep a playful mood to the platform, one of Alif Baa Taa World’s key features was to include a social element to its platform. When users have friends and family doing the same thing and learning at the same time, they are more enticed to sit down and do the work if they are able to do it with someone they know. Friendly competition is introduced in the platform so users can compete to stay on top of their work.
02
The Solution
Dashboard
The goal was to keep interactions intentional and simple for users. Users have access to the left toolbar which houses the main actions users will take while using this platform. The key pages users will be using most frequently are “Dashboard” and “Games”, while parents/guardians will spend most of their time in “Store” and “Learning Insights”.
On each user’s dashboard, they will be shown what their lesson for the day is, their letter mastery, and what their learning streak is. Parents/guardians can set a goal for the user to hit each day, and that progress is shown on the dashboard. If parents/guardians want to drill down into what was accomplished by the user, there is a recent activity feed that goes into key actions that were taken during each learning session.
Games
The Games home page very clearly lays out the games that are available to play and indicates what skills users can expect to use while playing the game. If users are looking to target a specific skill in particular, the search bar allows them to search for a skill or game of their choosing.
Example Game: Alif is for Asad
On the right is an example of what a game looks like. Each game varies based on the difficulty level that is set by the parent/guardian or the user. The difficulty level toggles different skills that are prioritized as they play the game.
On the right, users are shown an animal and are prompted to play a hangman-esque game to practice their memorization and writing skills. The Arabic keyboard is presented to the user and after being shown an image of an animal, the user has to spell the animal in Arabic.
As users answer correctly or incorrectly, users can see their progress and have the ability to request hints as they get stuck on a question.
Storefront
We are sensitive to parent/guardians views on wanting to limit screen time for their children. Wanting to not solely be a digital experience where parents and guardians may feel like their children have to be glued to a screen in order to learn the language, Alif Baa Taa World has its own storefront where parents/guardians can explore products to supplement their learning off the screen.
Products are displayed initially by what is a Best Seller, but as the product listing progresses, products will be recommended to parents/guardians based on their children’s progress on the platform. If someone specifically needs more help with their writing abilities, more writing products will be recommended.
03
Future Considerations
From an experience and feature standpoint, one of the things that can introduced as a feature for users is the ability for users to continue this learning experience on both a mobile and desktop platform. Handing an iPad to a little one is the easiest way for time to be lost on an app that the little one wasn’t intended to be on. By offering a desktop experience, children’s movement is limited and parents/guardians can supervise them more closely.
One thing Alif Baa Taa can aim to do is potentially find a good middle road for visuals of the platform itself. Being too childish can be hurtful in that children won’t take the platform seriously and just see it as a place to waste time and play games. Being too formal and not as colorful will make it seem like homework and not something children would want to do willingly.
Right now, Alif Baa Taa relies heavily on games to teach the Arabic language. What the platform could really benefit from is the addition of modules, videos, and assignments to supplement the learning of each user. Adding modules and videos may make the platform seem more like school, which is both a good thing and bad thing. For parents/guardians, it would be seen as a good thing having more structure to the program. From a child’s perspective, what used to be fun and entertaining now becomes one more thing they’ll be asked about.