KoalAR
Mobile Game and Web Server
Client: Symbio Zoo
Summary: An educational mobile app and teaching tool for students to learn about wildlife through exploration.
KoalAR is an educational mobile app that lets students learn about wildlife through AR animals that they can track in real life. By photographing and making record of them, they learn by becoming explorers of flora and fauna! Additionally, quizzes reinforce student learning, enhancing retention of syllabus material. For teachers, the KoalAR web portal allows them to customise teaching materials, set boundaries, and track student's progress.
I was tasked as the sole UI designer for both the mobile app and web portal, from early mockups to final asset implementation. For this project, I took care to make sure the app was vibrant and would appeal to children between ages 5-10, using vibrant colours and icons that were more descriptive.
In addition, many key buttons were designed to be more tactile, appearing and behaving like physical buttons due to assumptions of children's lack of familiarity with flat icons and buttons. From our playtests with school children, learning how to use the app was thankfully a smooth process!
In addition to designing the mobile app, I was also responsible for designing the web portal used by teachers to manage students and their lesson plans. After a series of mockups and back and forth design discussions with the client, I proceeded to implement UI changes. At the time, I was only starting to learn how to style websites using HTML and CSS, and am quite proud of being able to navigate a project that utilised sails.js.
It was a privilege to have been able to help make this app look and feel good! Of all the parts of this project, I enjoyed brainstorming how students could find joy in collect photographs of AR animals, the Photo Journal screen is one of my favourites.
I hope students enjoy the lovingly designed and illustrated assets I implemented into the app! Stay tuned for KoalAR to roll out into schools in Australia soon!
