Last year we had the privilege to partner with one of the oldest and most respected names in the information industry: Encyclopedia Britannica. Founded in 1768, Britannica has amassed an amazingly diverse array of media over the years, all well-curated by a team of great minds.
Britannica approached us to design a mobile strategy that would take advantage of their content without sacrificing the editorial quality for which they are known. Together, we envisioned a series of small, easy to follow educational apps focused on specific areas of interest to the K-6 market - areas where we could inspire that spark of fascination that makes learning fun. We settled on the iPhone/iPad as an intuitive learning tool that would enable us to make the learning experience deeply engaging.
We launched the series with 3 apps: Dinosaurs, Volcanoes, and Ancient Egypt. The Britannica team put together a promotional video that gives an excellent overview of the product line:
Each app is richly populated with content that has been given detailed editorial review and is tailored to its audience. We’ve included highly interactive games and activities such as jig-saw puzzles, quizzes, memory match games, and a geo-aware map interface that displays learning materials based on proximity to the device’s current location.
The apps have received a number of glowing reviews, including from The Big App Show, hosted by “The Podfather” Adam Curry:
Behind the scenes, the app series is based on a reusable app engine which is designed to significantly reduce the costs associated with publishing new products. Each part of the app is completely modular, and new configurations can be created as needed based on the topics covered in the app.
We took the high road approach to UI design, opting to create new native controls instead of using those built into iOS. While a bit more challenging, this approach allows our UI to pull off a degree of polish that is difficult to accomplish using just the basic controls.
During development, our project came to the attention of Apple, who invited us down to The Apple Campus in Palo Alto. We spent two days there discussing UI design and doing detailed performance testing of our app engine. It was truly informative and really helped us dial in the user experience.
The apps have done quite well in the market, leading Apple to include the UK versions in their Hot Trends in 2010. Apple has also included the apps in their Apple Learning Tour - a traveling roadshow which showcases iPads as learning tools to educators across the country.
We began 2011 with the release of the latest app in the series: Solar Systems, and have quite a few more products in the pipeline. It’s going to be an exciting year. We’re really looking forward to helping usher in the future of education.
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