With over 17 million installs, on multiple platforms (iOS, Android and Kindle) and available in over 30 different languages, the Bible App for Kids is the number one children’s Bible app in the world. As creative lead on the project, I worked closely with stakeholders and our small internal team, to help concept, design, develop and bring this app to life. Whether it was figuring out the UX of a large interactive map navigation system or concepting out animations through 40 stories of the Bible, there was no small task for our team to tackle. And it was that incredible team effort that also brought a #2 category ranking and featuring on the iOS App Store.
The first and most important problem to solve on this project, was figuring out how to win with our biggest little critics. Play testing early and often with kids was essential in helping us steer the direction of the app. Their smiles and laughter were dead giveaways that we were headed in the right direction. Alternatively they would quickly express their brutally honest feedback at the first moment of disapproval. If nothing else, we learned that kids love to tap anything and everything on screen. So making the app highly interactive was essential.
When working on the UX of the app, another large problem we faced was figuring out how to pack in 40 stories of the Bible, while still maintaining a low overall app size. This problem, in addition to learning that kids crave interactivity, would ultimately lead us to carefully designing out a fully interactive map for kids to navigate each story. The key to keeping the app size low was shipping with only one story upon initial app install. Once a story was complete, parents could choose to install additional stories as to help manage their overall device storage. A win-win, for both parents and kids.
Stories in the app ranged from 5 to 8 scenes. For the copy and content, we worked with a third party publisher experienced in translating the Bible into a narrative appropriate for kids. We also worked with professional illustrators like Rob McClurkan to help develop the overall look and feel of the scenes and characters.
Animation was an essential part in bringing the Bible App for Kids to life. Working closely with our small team of animators, we loaded up each story with a ton of interactive characters for children to engage with. Utilizing skeletal animations was the key to bringing each character to life while also keeping the overall app size small. Particle effects were used for collectible items sprinkled throughout each story and in a few rare instances, frame by frame animations were necessary to achieve more complex animations like Moses parting the Red Sea.
As if 40 interactive stories was not enough, after the launch of the app, we slowly rolled out a series of activities to help increase engagement. Now, after the completion of each story, children would be able to unlock one of four different types of activities. The Color Sheet, Scene Arrange, Memory Match and Sticker Sheet activities were all designed to be simple, colorful, fun and most importantly help reinforce the learnings of each story.
