For my review and redesign I have chosen the application Toca Kitchen 2. This app has over 210,000 downloads only on the iStore and is aimed for children between 3-8 years-old. With an approximate rating of 4.3 stars, this app seems to be extremely enjoyable.

The usage of the app is simple: users select a character from a choice of three characters and proceed to make plates of food that the character can eat. The left side of the screen has shelves with food and the right shelves with cooking utensils such as frying pans, knives, boiling pots etc. Players can simply drag and drop the food/ cooking utensils to use them.

First, I am going to focus on the positives of the app. The first thing that I noticed and appreciated about this app was the gender, racial and cultural neutrality. The three characters offered by the app are quite cartoonish and don’t seem to come from any particular race and can be interpreted to belong to any race or none. (one of the characters is like a humanoid with teeth sticking out and ears sticking out from the top of his head.) Additionally, the app doesn’t use language but universal cues such as a character sighing, licking his/her lips, smiling etc. to convey messages. Also, the app doesn’t play to any gender norms and is gender neutral.

As far as the design and graphics are concerned, the app is beyond approach. The intuitive usage of the app is what possibly hooks young children and ensures that they pick up the game quickly. The app is manipulated completely by the users and the users are free to do whatever they want to. Hence, it is highly active. The bright, funny and colorful graphics then probably keep children engaged and attentive. The characters tend to have amusing responses to certain foods such as spitting out the food or sticking out their tongue and this, along with the complete freedom to do whatever they want, ensures that kids are engaged.

As far as the meaningful pillar is concerned, the app is effective to a certain extent. Children are using vegetables, fruits, meats (there is a vegetarian option for the game also!) to cook. They can hopefully draw connections between what they eat and what they are feeding the characters. This way they should be able to make meaningful connections. However, other than this usage of everyday food, the app offers no additional route for meaning making.

On the social interaction pillar the app falls short. While it is possible for many kids to be playing and looking at the same screen, the app offers no additional facilities for it. The game is possible only in single player mode and has no reason for interactivity.

So while the app rates well on active and engaging pillars, fairly decently on the meaningful pillar, it rates low on the interactivity pillar.

As far as the learning goals are concerned, there don’t seem to be any. One of the major selling strategies of the application is that it is essentially not a game but a ‘digital toy’. This means that the app allows the kids to freely play with it however they want to with no strategy, covert learning goals or way to win the game. There are no tangible rewards such as points. This approach while interesting, limits the teaching opportunities the app has.

With just a few minor tweaks, this app can potentially be useful for teaching kids about nutrition. The revisions that I am going to suggest will hopefully increase the learning goals of the app while staying somewhat true to its ethos of being a ‘toy’. The revisions lie mainly in four factors-

1)Asking the users for their age and activities they enjoy doing

2) The characters making requests for food.

3) Adding a happiness and health meter. The happiness meter should fluctuate depending on how well the children adhere to character request and the health meter according to the nutrition in the food.

4) One pop-up question about the consequences of the meal the character ate.

First, the app can ask the children for their age and some activities that they enjoy doing (Eg. playing football, dancing, singing) . It should choose its ‘teaching level’ according to the age of the child and store the activities that they are doing. (The purpose for this is simply meaning making so that the child can relate this to their own lives and this feature can be removed)

The characters can make requests for the kinds of meals they want (Eg. I want to eat a vegetable, fruit and some meat so that I am fit while INSERT ACTIVITY  today, OR I want to be unhealthy today. Give me chocolate, bread and fried vegetables!  For older kids- ‘I want a meal rich in proteins, vitamin A and carbohydrates’, ‘I want to grow tall. Feed me food that will help me?’ , ‘Give me a balanced meal today!’) The kids should then try and make those meals. Depending on how well they adhere to the task the happiness meter of the character should fluctuate.

Once the character has been fed, depending on the meal, the character can respond. If the meal is high on the happiness meter characters can lick their lips and smile. Otherwise if the meal is low on the happiness meter, the character can stick out their tongue and show dissatisfaction as they do now. There can then be a pop up menu with all the food options asking children what they think the character would prefer to eat depending on the request. If the child picks the wrong items, the app should show the children an example of a meal that matches the request. (Although this would be a good opportunity to make the child seek an adult, I feel that will limit the app in other ways.)

For older kids, there can be another message after that depending on the food the character ate. (Eg. meal high on chocolate- ‘I was having fun while INSERT ACTIVITY but then my tooth began aching! What do you think I ate that lead to this?’)

This way, simply by allowing the characters to make requests, adding the questions and tweaking the feedback system, the app can potentially teach children about nutrition.

The first set, GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine, tells the story of Goldie who builds a spinning machine to help her dog, Nacho, chase his tail. What ultimately gets built is a simple Rube Goldberg-inspired machine that spins many characters. GoldieBlox is designed for girls aged 4-9 years old. The characters, colors and storylines intentionally appeal to girls. For example, two storybooks involve princesses. GoldieBlox seems to be taking a page out of Lego’s recent Friends Collection playbook, to “earnestly meet girls halfway in an attempt to stoke their interest in engineering” (Orenstein, p.2). Executives at Lego found that “in order to be gender-fair…they have to be gender-specific” (Orenstein, p. 2). However, not everyone feels this way. Many believe these toys targeted towards girls run the risk of reinforcing stereotype (Gray).

Personally, I commend GoldieBlox for creating a toy set that appeals to girls and can break down any stereotypes of girls as builders and engineers. As for the specific set I played with, the book’s storyline and instructions were simple to follow with great drawings. At the end of the book, there were suggestions for other ‘machines’ to build which offers some variety in play. One critique is around the text. Vocabulary varied throughout the book from simple to very complex (‘centrifuge’). I know GoldieBlox is introducing an app and website in addition to the set so these digital offerings might be great opportunities to be more consistent in lexical density and vary by age, allowing different reading levels. The physical set was mostly easy to handle, though I did have some trouble sticking the pegs onto the board. For younger ages, an adult might need to support. One area to consider for future sets is an opportunity to make the set a more social experience – whether a friend or parent to join in the building fun. This might mean different storybooks for social play versus independent play or offering extra prompts through an app experience.

Finally, the GoldieBlox website offers a way for girls to upload videos of their own creation. It’s a fun sharing experience but I wonder how realistic it is for girls aged 4-9 to make/upload videos. Current videos are all very professional so serves only as inspiration. One feature I really like for the website is the warning prompt when you click to the iTunes store or YouTube. It’s not perfect but serves to draw kids attention and hopefully prevent them from leaving the page. As GoldieBlox moves towards more digital offerings, there will be more challenges in terms of matching digital ability, privacy and security concerns. Instead, I would recommend making these digital offerings geared towards parents or teachers on how best to leverage the physical toy sets and engage their tiny learners.