Apolo Kids
Professional project
A visual tutorial for children who have not yet discovered vertical scrolling in the Game Area.
My contribution
I combined usability observations and app analytics, designed the gesture demonstration, and defined its eligibility rules and development handoff.
Product and project scope
Kokoro Kids is an educational game app for children aged three to six, with more than 250 games across learning areas including science, communication, numbers, logic and creativity. The team includes education and psychology specialists.
Children explore games and categories through horizontal and vertical dragging. Content below the initial view includes recently played games. Discovering vertical scrolling therefore matters both for exploring the catalogue and for returning to a favourite.
Vertical scrolling during usability sessions
App metrics showed how people used Kokoro Kids, but they could not tell us whether children were playing independently or with an adult’s help. To understand that difference, we invited children and their parents to the office for in-person usability sessions.
Before the sessions, we reviewed each child’s profile to understand their previous experience with tablets and similar games. During the sessions, we observed their reactions, whether they understood the flows, and how they interacted with their parents.
Children often wanted to replay games they enjoyed. Horizontal scrolling felt intuitive, but vertical scrolling was much less obvious. When children scrolled down, it was often after watching a parent demonstrate the gesture. Without it, recently played games and more learning categories could remain undiscovered.
We observed that children asking their parents to play Kokoro was important to the subscription decision. Former subscribers also reported that their child no longer asking to play was one of the main reasons for cancelling. Helping children return to games they liked could support that relationship with the product. Parents also valued the breadth of the game catalogue and its different learning areas. Making more categories discoverable could make that value more visible. These were motivations for the design, rather than measured business outcomes.
Help children learn to scroll down, so they can explore more games and return to their favourites without relying on an adult to navigate for them.
Usability observations and app analytics
I combined desk research, a review of the recorded usability sessions and app analytics. The data below describe existing behaviour, before the tutorial was released.
–% of users made a significant vertical scroll, and –% reached the bottom. In-person sessions showed that scrolling was often prompted or performed by a parent. Events alone cannot tell us whether children understood the gesture.
First-session scrolling differed between phones and tablets. I reviewed each device group separately when considering where guidance might be needed.
Choosing a game took longer inside folders than in the Game Area. This helped me compare navigation contexts; the data did not establish why people took longer.
At seconds, around one in five users without a meaningful vertical scroll had not tapped a game. Their median time to tap was – seconds, versus a mean of – seconds. This was an exploratory timing signal, not a validated tutorial trigger.
Tutorial format and eligibility rules
Children often scrolled after watching a parent. I designed a short visual demonstration they could imitate, rather than relying on written instructions for children aged three to six.
The tutorial only appears when no meaningful vertical scroll has been recorded. Time in character videos, Daily Mood and daily gifts is excluded, so the demonstration does not interrupt those activities.
Tutorial interaction and development handoff
The proposed tutorial demonstrates the gesture within the existing Game Area. Its purpose is to help children discover the content below the initial view through a short, simple movement they can copy.
After a game, the flow checks whether the child is eligible before showing the gesture. Children who already scroll continue without guidance; new players have time to explore first.
After gifts, check-ins or videos, timing resumes only when the child reaches the Game Area. This keeps the intervention tied to the navigation problem rather than to elapsed time elsewhere in the app.
The handoff document captures the detailed first-phase behaviour and eligibility rules for the development team.
Implementation status and evaluation plan
The feature has been developed and is awaiting implementation in a future app update. The project produced a targeted visual tutorial, eligibility logic, a flowchart and a detailed development handoff.
A next step would be to observe whether eligible children can reach categories and recently played games without adult help, and assess tutorial exposure, meaningful vertical scrolling and time to the first scroll by device. These are proposed follow-up measures; post-release results are not yet available.
