Curious Hat is an emerging children's app developer who is offering apps that will help to transform the way we think about mobiles devices supporting children's learning and development.
Its two apps so far, Color Vacuum and PHLIP, are hopefully a demonstration of some fine things to come. Both of these apps ask children to look through the screen and out into the world around them. They embrace the idea that a mobiles device is indeed mobiles. These apps encourage children to walk around and explore the world around them capturing colors or beautiful images that they can then learn from and create puzzles with.
The main goals of Curious Hat are to engage the children with the real world around them using the new technologies as exploration tools and create new opportunities of interaction between adults and children. Their approach is opposite to so much of the mainstream commentary you hear about screens and interactive technologies. Most people see them as passive tools that capture children in an insular space and prevent them from interacting with the world around them. Curious Hat isn't just talking about why this idea is limiting, it is out there showing how good design can actually facilitate children using mobiles devices to engage with the world and others around them.
Co-founder Luca Prasso told me, "As a side goal, we are creating and developing a network of international artists that collaborate with us bringing their art and vision mixed with our innovative ways to take advantage of the mobiles technologies. This creates very stimulating collaborations and gives us the opportunity to explore a visual language that may go beyond the more traditional 'children' simplified graphics found in many apps."
This is no small operation. This is a team with grand visions that are artistic, playful and passionate.
Curious Hat has published two apps to date, with a third, EyePaint, coming in October.
Their first app was Color Vacuum.
Color Vacuum turns the device into a 200-year-old color-vacuuming machine created by the mysterious Professor Vapori. The children use it to explore colors, collecting them as color bubbles under the camera glass, observing how similar colors interact with each other and opposite colors float away in the color wheel. They can also search for the collected colors, creating open-ended games with friends, not constrained by levels or time. The children define the rules of the game and the place where to play.
Their most recent launch is PHLIP.
PHLIP continues on the idea of offering ways for the children to observe the physical world around them and use the camera to "see." The visual puzzles are created by the images they shoot and the tile complexity they select. There are no predefined levels to play, it's all in the hands of the player. There are sharing options that allow the player to share the images shot in PHLIP with friends via email.
The difference between Curious Hat and most of the other educational developers is that it doesn't create games or multiple choice questions. It is interested in the self-directed learning experience, in fostering the innate desire to discover and find out. As Luca Passo puts it: "We develop exploration tools, not games. We want the child (and the adult around them) to explore and push their creativity and ingenuity. We want the children and the adult to add an important layer to our apps, a layer that brings them together, in a place where they can learn more about each other."
It is well worth keeping an eye on Curious Hat. I sure will be. In the meantime, do check out its current offerings. It offers a new way of thinking about apps and digital tools for children. When I asked co-founder Luca Passo:
His answer was:
