THE STORY OF
STORY TIME FOR KIDS
Story Time For Kids is an interactive mobile storytelling app for kids. Available on iOS and Android, it packs in a wide range of engaging digital reading material. The app has several built-in games and activities too.
Story Time For Kids is a digital interactive mobile storytelling app for kids. The application comes with an extensive collection of free classic fairytales and original shorts. There are in-app purchase options too, for downloading more digital story files. The app has high-end parental controls and comes with kid-friendly features. Recently, Version 3.0 of this popular iPhone app for kids was released. We have ramped up the UI of the application in the new version.
The biggest challenge our mobile app developers faced was to conceptualize an application that would blend in fun activities and educational benefits. We were not looking to make just another run-of-the-mill mobile game for kids. After several rounds of brainstorming, and surveys among parents worldwide, the idea of Story Time gradually took shape.
With present-generation kids getting increasingly familiar with basic mobile technology, we were always confident that our free app would be a success. However, the in-house iPhone app development experts at Teknowledge had to make sure that parents did not have to assist their preschool kids, while they were reading on the app.That’s precisely why we made all the controls kid-friendly. The graphic designers in charge of the project came up with seamless UI and in-app navigation features.
While gathering ideas for the app, we came across a common grievance of parents. On many of the already existing kids’ apps, there were chances of accidental paid downloads - so much so that leaving them alone with an app was risky. With Story Time, we intended to do away with this fear. Yet another challenge in front of our app agency was giving the maximum possible exposure to the new reading app for kids. There were several story-based apps for children at the stores already, and our device integration had to be of the highest order - so that everyone could download and enjoy the fun elements of Story Time For Kids. While we are all for making kids tech-savvy, excessive gadget and app-addiction is not something we promote. The ill-effects on the health and behavioral features of kids due to prolonged usage (particularly during odd hours) of mobile and tablet apps are pretty much well-documented. We at Teknowledge wanted to make an app which kids could use on their own - but their parents could decide WHEN they were to use it. This gave birth to the idea of implementing parental controls.
Story Time doubles up as a fun learning app for kids. All the stories on the app are narrated in a captivating fashion. They can go a long way in stoking the imaginative powers of young readers. The automatic text-highlighting, page-turning and swiping features keep user-convenience levels high. Our app experts put in an additional feature: whenever any word in the stories is tapped, its correct pronunciation is audible. Reading habits are encouraged, and vocabulary pools get enhanced. We managed to make Story Time a quintessential fun-meets-educational app for kids.
To ensure that little children could operate the app on their own, the controls of the app were tested repeatedly. Apart from the regular mobile app testing procedures, we created a focus group of 8 children in the 3-5 age group (the kids of some our developers participated) to get reliable feedback. Once it was confirmed beyond doubt that the navigation and controls were indeed child-friendly, we went ahead with the release.
Next up, we had to counter the possibility of unnecessary downloads. For this, we incorporated all the in-app purchase options (for additional storybooks) in a sophisticated freemium format. Downloads can be done on the app only by adults. Kids, while reading along on Story Time, will not be able to download anything on their own. `
Gaining the maximum possible exposure for our free app for kids was perhaps the easiest challenge for us. When the first version of Story Time came out, Teknowledge had already established itself as a leading multinational iPhone app development company. As such, implementing seamless iPhone-iPad integration features was basically a breeze. For the Android version of the app, we made a list of all the popular Android phones/tablets (the list is regularly revised), and customized Story Time For Kids for each device.
The app development team in charge of the Story Time project felt that personalized parental controls were the best way to go for:
Once the basic framework of Story Time was ready and we had chalked up ways to counter the main challenges, the focus turned on including some fun additional features in the app. These so-called ‘wow’ factors have helped our app to stand out among other similar mobile software for kids. Firstly, we introduced a dual reading option on the app. Children could either read the stories themselves, or they could opt for the audio-narration (‘Read To Me’) option. It was an app for kids, after all, and we made sure that they could use it just the way they liked. The second highlight of Story Time Kids is, arguably, one of the key reasons of its widespread popularity. Our mobile content developers and app designing experts included a variety of fun games and activities in the application. Kids were given the option to try their hands at coloring games, word puzzles, origami challenges, crossword games, and a whole lot more - right within the app. We felt that a proper kids’ mobile app should be able to keep the little users engaged.
Although Story Time For Kids is currently one of the best iPhone apps for kids, it did have certain technical issues earlier on. We received reports from parents that some of the downloaded stories were getting automatically deleted (in the introductory version). Within a couple of months, Version 1.0.1 was released, and users were advised to go for this free upgrade. We had fixed the bug - and no other user-complaint came forth.
Over the last three years, several professional awards have come the way of Story Time For Kids. Among them, we are particularly proud of the following:
In addition, our mobile app for kids has been featured at iTunes, and has received 4+ ratings from several leading online app review magazines.
We also have plans to introduce animations in the Android version of Story Time, to replicate the success of its iOS version. Story Time For Kids is easily one of the best entries in the app development portfolio of Teknowledge Software. It has been wowing children from all over the world for years, and we are confident that its popularity would soar further in future.
Version 3.0 of Story Time For Kids is already available for download at iTunes. We have made it completely compatible with the iOS 8 (and later) platform. The app can be downloaded and used on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus (we performed separate tests for that).
It has been a constant endeavor of ours to expand the collection of digital stories downloadable on the app. Last quarter, several new stories were released - and we intend to bring more fairytales and original tales to the app-users, on a regular basis.
We also have plans to introduce animations in the Android version of Story Time, to replicate the success of its iOS version. Story Time For Kids is easily one of the best entries in the app development portfolio of Teknowledge Software. It has been wowing children from all over the world for years, and we are confident that its popularity would soar further in future.
