Dubit's digital team designs and builds apps, games and virtual worlds for children's TV, toy and education brands. For PBS KIDS we created Kart Kingdom, a multiplayer virtual world with over 9 million players. We also designed and built LEGO DUPLO Street, which had over 5 million downloads in its first four months.
Dubit's digital team makes apps, educational products, games, virtual worlds and VR and AR products for young audiences. Its designers, artists, programmers, QA testers and project managers take a product from strategy to launch and marketing. Along the way, rapid prototypes test concepts with young players.
In Kart Kingdom, players created a kart and an avatar to explore the world. They could play alone or team up with thousands of other players at any time. The world held educational, driving and multiplayer games, and engineering games in which players designed and built private rooms, called Clanky Caverns, to show their friends.
LEGO DUPLO Street, designed for 2 to 5 year olds, gave players brightly coloured, buildable virtual sets drawn from everyday life. They used them to create and tell their own experiences, build vocabulary and express their views and ideas.
For education brands, Dubit redesigned Hooked on Phonics. We gave the programme's pedagogy a new visual appearance, hundreds of new animated videos and dozens of interactive learning games. Its 24 progressive lessons each ended with a story written using the words just learned.
How do you design a game for pre-schoolers?
Limiting failure states is best practice in games for pre-schoolers: it encourages exploration, puts action ahead of completion and guides players who may need help. LEGO DUPLO Street, which Dubit designed and built for pre-schoolers, limited failure states. Dubit tested the app with over 40 preschool children and their parents during development and before launch.
The approach drew on Dubit's "Technology and Play" report, a design guide for pre-schoolers. In DUPLO Street, players were given the first part of a street and added buildings by dragging and dropping bricks on top of each other. When they were done, characters and objects animated, so players could watch and play as their creations came to life. Multiple touch let parents and siblings drag and drop at the same time.
The street was built to hold interest over time. Expandable systems added familiar scenarios, such as an airport and a fire station, and seasonal updates, such as a snow-covered street for Christmas. Players were encouraged to role-play and explore different parts of the street as well as build, and to create their own DUPLO world.
Dubit's interactive testing found the points where players got frustrated, and those were fixed. It also made sure the target audience could reach every part of the app.
Has a children's app built by an agency won an award?
Yes. LEGO DUPLO Street, which Dubit designed, won an Editors' Choice Award. K'NEX Thrill Rides, for which Dubit created the VR app, was nominated for Innovative Toy of the Year.
DUPLO Street had over 5 million downloads in its first four months, and a 4 star rating in the Play Store, one of LEGO's own measures for the app.
Can a physical toy be connected to a digital or VR experience?
Yes. Dubit created a VR app for K'NEX Thrill Rides construction toys, and every set came with a cardboard VR viewer. Scanning a code on the box unlocked a virtual reality ride on the new track. In the app, players could also design their own roller coasters. The creation tool took account of physics and the toy's physical dimensions, so a design could be built from real K'NEX parts. Players could ride it in VR or share it with friends.
During the design phase, Dubit built and tested three prototypes with players of the target age, to find out which construction controls were most intuitive and to find the fun in both the 2D and VR experiences.
For Topps, Dubit designed and developed an app for its Premier League Match Attax trading cards that put a digital layer on top of the physical product. Players scanned codes found in packs of Match Attax Extras to unlock digital cards. The image recognition that validated pack purchases also gathered fan data for clubs. Players could play against friends in leagues to win more cards.
Dubit also developed a Match Attax app for Topps' German Bundesliga and European Champions League cards. Players scanned codes from Match Attax Extras packets to unlock cards, then picked a line-up and battled a random opponent, a friend or the weekly tournament using each card's stats. Coins won in battle bought more digital cards.
Dubit also created a digital-physical learning experience inspired by the Montessori philosophy. The app's questions were answered with supplied wooden props, letters and numbers, and it ran on an iPad in a supplied stand. The app started with counting, addition and subtraction, and its AI introduced new concepts and harder questions over time.
