Color Time

I made Color Time to help parents teach colors to their little ones. After some searching in various app stores, I didn't really like what was available. I knew I wanted a multiple choice game. I wanted it to be quick to play and to require adult participation. A couple weekends later I had turned two mockups into a bare bones game to play with my daugther.

Eager Tester :)

From day one, my daughter asked to play it almost every night for six months straight. This meant I got to learn a lot. Everytime we’d play, I learned something new.

The most interesting dynamic for me throughout was that the game is experienced by two people at the same time with each participant having different needs and vastly differing abilities, and it needs to cater to both. It was fun switching between perspectives to improve both experiences.

playing color time with a little one, a two person experience.

What’s Next?

Now my daughter knows her colors, like really well, and since she was so engaged with the experience I decided to add other lists of things to learn: shapes, numbers, letters, and stuff.

After talking to some friends overseas, I got really excited about the idea of supporting alternate languages. I did some poking around in my codebase, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do this easily with my hobbled together prototype. So now I’m learning React. 🙃

Check out the project https://colortime.app (best viewed on mobile).

the reward screen in color time shows you things that match the color you just found. Here red means you get an apple, a strawberry, a raspberry.

Posted February 2, 2020