UI/UX
- Colourful and engaging.
- The app revolves around children's illustrated story books.
- Screen and app accessible for users with specific needs like font size, display brightness, etc.
- The app will require camera and mic access and permission from parents.
Subscription
- The app will be available on a 7-day free trial, and after the trial expires, a monthly or yearly subscription will need to be purchased.
Children Age Group: 5 to 7 years, 8 to 10 years & 11 to 12 years
- A parent will log in to WordPuddle, then they will create a child profile. The parent will need to log in every time to access and select to child’s profile for them to explore.
- For younger groups of 5 to 7 years, a parent would need to navigate up to find the e-book, open it up and then hand over the device for the child to read the book.
- Books will be marked with age groups.
- With the help of icons, reading companions and audiobooks will be identified, and users can favourite books, and know where to find the accessibility section.
Subjects
- Children's stories encourage mental well-being through a positive outlook towards friendships, the natural environment and much more.
Accessibility
This is one of the most significant features of the app. Since the app was created to help and assist neurodivergent children in improving their reading skills, the app would offer various added features to personalise the screen to suit a child’s comfort, under the accessibility section. These are:
- Screen colour brightness can be changed from a bright-coloured screen to a calmer, subtle colour.
Figure 1: WordPuddle accessibility menu
- Various dyslexia-friendly font selections would be available where all the e-book text would change into the selected font. Researchers and practitioners already working towards finding ways to support children with learning difficulties revealed that dyslexia-friendly fonts does play an important role and helps how the brain functions in recognising english letters. Text layout - sizes of the words, letters, spacing in between each word, spacing in between sentences and paragraph, etc. plays a very important role by avoiding confusion and causing errors. Skiada et al. (2014).
- The next option is the e-book text can be transformed into the Bionic Reading font, designed to assist people with dyslexia and ADHD. Research to find if Bionic Reading feature has potential for children specifically aged 6 to 12 years old with the help of AI platforms like ChatGPT which brought no latest updates on the AI platform.
ChatGPT suggested to check research papers and articles that might be available online, which I had already done by this time. Please see below at the screenshots. Further research indicated that this reading system has been proven beneficial for children with learning disabilities. In this reading format, the first few letters of the words are bolded, creating an artificial fixation point for the reader's mind. Bonifacio, R. C. (2022). This product itself has certain features to personalise display and various other algorithms, that WordPuddle might utilise as a part of its future feature upgrades.
Figure 2: Bionic Reading
Figure 3: Findings from ChatGPT on Bionic Reading
Figure 4: Findings from ChatGPT on Bionic Reading
- Volume control buttons that would increase and decrease the volume plus slowed and faster reading options are available as well.
Games and Activities