Project Overview

Imagine that a child could learn the entire Encyclopedia of Life--including how nature designs and solves problems around structure, pattern and color--without it ever feeling like school.

FERRET is an interactive iPad app that teaches children the ins and outs of the animal kingdom through play. Children are challenged to “build” animals from the inside out, using intuitive building blocks of anatomical information. Each tap and swipe leads to new discoveries about how animals are made -- and reinforces how they are classified in the natural world.

Children first comprehend by seeing, and we have spared no detail to make our app the most visually stunning science app on the market. FERRET features elegant design, vivid color coding, hi-resolution photography, and both video and icons that explain scientific classification in descriptive, plain English.

FERRET unlocks the aptitude for discovery inherent in every child… and will help create the next generation of scientists, artists, and designers.

Organisation

na2ure

Team

Vijal Parikh - Co founder
Bob Matsuoka - Developer, initial IOS architecture

Project Brief

FERRET is an iOS app that teaches children the ins and outs of the animal kingdom through play. The app utilizes vivid visuals and excellent design to create a visually rich experience, and features an interactive structure that allows players to absorb the information they discover.

The object of FERRET is to “build” animals using a periodic table-like classification system. To start, players choose an animal they’d like to build. From there, the app lists eight categories of animal features: inside, outside, limbs, movement, breathing, eating, heating and birth.

For each category, a column unfolds that lists possible anatomical features for the category (i.e., inside will list “vertebrate” and “invertebrate”). Children swipe to unveil photos and videos that visually demonstrate each feature and choose the option that they think best. Once children have chosen the correct feature for each category, they win!
Through this exercise children build a comprehensive knowledge of how biology evolves and differentiates across the animal kingdom.

FERRET is not only an opportunity for children to learn through clear, structured thinking, but to develop a deep and dynamic appreciation for the beauty and creativity inherent in the natural world.

Project Innovation/Need

We have found a way to marry information design and pattern recognition, pioneering an entirely new category of game. FERRET is both scientifically accurate and high design, making it coffee table worthy and a classroom necessity. Paired with her sister board game Ani-gram-it, FERRET offers a unique, transmedia experience which is truly the future of gamified learning.

Top industry experts in science, education, design, games and toys agree that this is a radically new, smart, and elegant way to learn. From HASBRO, Chicago Toy Fair and ThinkFun, to Bank Street School, The Chapin School, to PhDs at Princeton, Yale and Columbia to RISD’s STEM to STEAM office, to Biomimicry 3.8 and the VC’s behind Sphero, LittleBits and Makerbot, excitement is building around Ani-gram-it and FERRET.

There’s nothing like this on the market, and these are just our first products launching now in Spring 2014. Nature learning is finally as beautiful and intelligent as Nature herself.

Design Challenge

The biggest design challenge with FERRET was building the classification system it uses in a way that was user friendly, scientifically accurate, and incredibly well-designed.

Design is about creating an object for a specific function, and Nature has done this for millions of years. Without fail. The trial-and-error genius of evolution ensures that each “object” or piece of life achieves perfect functionality--or dies.

We wanted children to learn those principles of Nature through play, and we wanted to do it in a way that mirrored the beauty and wonder of Nature herself.

And was FUN.

Thankfully, we had a RISD artist and a Cornell neurobiologist on the case.

Together, they created a game that reinforced how Nature’s structures, color patterns, and textures work together to create animals. In a game that looks like it belongs in a museum.

There’s never been a consumer facing product that did that… until now.

User Experience

The user experience with FERRET is designed for maximum swipability and individual engagement on the iPad.

Players select an animal from our main menu, and are immediately presented with 8 color-coded categories to create it: inside, outside, limbs, movement, breathing, eating, heating and birth. Swiping up from each category icon reveals different features within each category, in both scientific and plain English terminology (i.e., inside gives you “vertebrate” and “invertebrate”). Swiping left or right reveals images or gifs to help you understand those features.

Best of all, you can push the “More Info” button for further description and hints within each category.

You can swipe open both sides at the same time if you want to -- or, our personal favorite, open the images on one side and the more info on the other.

FERRET teacher is in parallel development and offers drills, enabling teachers to use it in a classroom setting to complement whatever nature curriculum they’re teaching.

FERRET has a very similar design to our board game (Ani-gram-it), but it reverses the action -- and makes it more friendly (and FUN) for individual players.