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Project Overview
Friendly Phonics is the first release in a series of wonderful educational apps, teaching basic alphabet sounds. Friendly Phonics stems from the unique perspective on education, of internationally acclaimed educationalist and printmaker, Dawn Matthews. Dawn herself is dyslexic, epileptic, dysrpraxic, ADHD and CDPD, and has dedicated her life to making it easier for others to learn the English language. This is the result.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Dawn Matthews (Client) - Printmaker, Painter, Educationalist
Chloe Constantinides - Creative Director
Ryan Liu - Graphic Designer
Yu Hei Leung - iOS Developer
Project Brief
Dawn Matthews is a prime example of someone who has used her own hardship to change the lives of others. She has powered through numerous health issues and learning difficulties, in the hope to leave a positive impact on this world - particularly those who have struggled with mainstream education, like herself.
Dawn knew creating an app was a way for her to bring all of her skills together, helping others to learn. Dawn has assisted countless dyslexic (and other learning style) students over the decades in removing the anxiety and pressure from learning to read and write, in her very unique style.
Among other things, she is the President of the Dyslexic Centre Australia Inc. and has also enjoyed the life of a professional printmaker and painter.
Because of Dawn's success, she wanted a way to share her knowledge with the world and make real change in the education system. The goal was to ensure the app was engaging, fun and not intimidating as she understands that this is the key to making learning enjoyable. The app needed to prove ageless and suitable for any culture - whether learning letters for the first time, trying an alternative to mainstream teaching or learning English as a second language.
Friendly Phonics needed to teach people to read and write basic alphabet sounds, incorporating Dawn's teaching methods and her own artwork.
Project Need
Conceptually, Friendly Phonics is a very unique app. It teaches people of all ages, learning styles and native languages to become familiar with the English alphabet. The app is an example of how those who learn differently from the norm can create beautiful, wonderful things.
Where most of the innovation lies, is in the multi-sensory teaching technique - using sight, sound and touch. It incorporates muscle-memory, positive reward and repetition to allow people to learn without really realising it.
Drawing a letter and revealing an image behind it is a technique that had remained unseen until Friendly Phonics was released. This process of anticipation, excitement, randomised content and ultimately, reward is what sets it apart from your typical educational app.
Dawn wanted the app to be modern and utilising correct UX and UI guidelines, whilst still maintaining a feeling of authenticity and realness. She says, "people are best taught by other people, not an automation." The app brings together the positives of real world teaching and technology in one.
User Experience
The app user is led through to each letter of the alphabet, tapping on letters/words and listening to sounds. Students can enjoy simple hand-drawn animations, illustrations and paintings throughout.
On the 'drawing' screen, the student’s finger runs over the touch screen and a randomly selected piece of artwork begins to appear behind the shape they have drawn.
When the pupil has correctly drawn the letter the whole image fills the screen as a reward for a letter well written, and the sound is heard by one of the voice over specialists.
The attention to detail in this app is extremely extensive. To spell, a user needs to associate the sound with the look of a letter. The voice recordings spanned an age group of 5 to 85 years old - this variation is to encourage repetition. Each sound was carefully recorded in Dawn's own studio, after teaching ordinary people how to say the sounds and read the sentences (for the most human quality possible). Sounds of breathing, lip and mouth movements were deliberately kept as those with imperfect hearing or motor problems pay attention to this the most.
The bounds of each letter traced were corrected to the millimetre to ensure it taught the letter in the least intimidating way, while still accurately teaching the shape. Rigorous testing also ensured the letters were wide enough so that those with unsteady hands could learn too. The app is also accessible for those with colour-blindness.
Project Marketing
Friendly Phonics is the first in a series of educational apps, released earlier this year. A second app in the series has been released (Digraph Sounds) and a third is in production. Subsequent apps are also in the pipeline. To maximise the effectiveness of any marketing, and to enable users to progress organically to the next level of learning, marketing efforts are being held off until completion of the third app which is due for release in November 2015.
Friendly Phonics received App of the Week in Business News 2015, identified as an app to look out for.
Currently, the app has only been promoted across Dawn's personal network, particularly through dyslexia organisations and has received numerous commendations and positive feedback.
The apps refreshing approach to education has caught the attention of a Chinese company who are currently in discussions about releasing the app locally for teaching English to school children.
The app has built in analytics and prompts for ratings/reviews to help improve the app store ranking. Further work will be done in this area to ensure the app gets noticed on the App Store.
Connections have been made with a number of educational staff and schools who are open to trialling the app in their classrooms in Australia.
Upon the completion of the third app, people will be encouraged to download the app/s via social media advertising and an active PR campaign will commence to drive awareness/growth.
Project Privacy
Friendly Phonics is a native app and all content is stored locally on the device. There is no process of 'saving' any content or results either. The only element that is exclusive to that user is if they have purchased any in-app purchases, which is all handled and protected directly through Apple. The nature of the app means that no personal or private information is captured, therefore there are no privacy concerns.
EdTech
EdTech focuses on how education is changing through technology, changing the way we learn and process knowledge. What will stand out here is those that enhance the learning experience and make a lasting impression.
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