Carolina Nobre

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Focus in the cursive writing!

Skriva is an application created to help children in the literacy phase, offering the practice of cursive writing, and also allowing the development of fine motor skills. The resources provided by the application are related to a curation made by professionals, indicating which exercises would be the most important for the practice of cursive: lowercase and uppercase letters, shapes, numbers, words and a notebook focused on continuous training of the selected letters.

The process

The biggest challenge encountered when designing Skriva was to ensure that the practice of activities had effectiveness in learning, as we did not find applications with the same proposal – considering a Brazilian context, which presented suitable fonts for a better understanding and training of cursive letters. To solve the problem we identified as an opportunity for innovation, we introduced a Brazilian font, which presents continuity characteristics, an issue that does not exist in the main similar ones that were found.

Letra Brasil was the font selected and introduced into the application. It was widely accepted by the teachers consulted, as they identified it as the best way to practice cursive handwriting. Skriva is a downloadable application from the App Store, compatible with iPad, Apple Pencil or touchscreen pens. The application’s business model turns its use to an end user in a context where parents or guardians can download for their children to practice cursive handwriting and develop fine motor skills at home, and also aimed at the public in schools, for classes in the literacy phase, having the teachers as guides for the activities in a large group.

The interviews made with teachers to clarify doubts and exchanges about the problematic were essential to realize that many existing applications do not consider the vision of these professionals, delivering content that does not value the practice of cursive. One of the main points brought was the non-existence of the practice of cursive letters that maintained a consistency of continuity, what the teachers call “letters with hands in hand”, because it is exactly this detail that makes the children exercise the perception of continuity, in addition to developing fine motor skills, activities that, in general, help with understanding and practice in the literacy phase.

Associated with the research, a series of design steps, such as building personas, defining information architecture, creating a consistent brand supported by the Lilo mascot (an essential element for capturing attention, considering our target audience), creation of wireframes and prototypes for testing before code-level development and product marketing actions. By associating a strong foundation of content, research and using design tools, I was able to create and deliver a product with high inspiring potential, as was possible to maintain consistency in the delivery of content and aesthetics, offering value to children and professionals who can use Skriva as an additional resource to what is provided in the classroom.

Usability tests

Throughout the development of the application, usability tests were carried out with children and teachers, in order to improve the user experience. Iterating the development process was essential for us to propose improvements to the interface, in order to deliver a clear, playful product with an impact on the main action: practicing cursive writing.

Methodology

Skriva’s development process was based on the CBL (Challenge Based Learning) methodology, which basically can be divided into 3 parts:

  • (1) Engage: moment in which we choose a (1.1) Big Idea (the macro area we will work with ), which for Skriva, falls under Education. Still at this stage, we define our (1.2) Essential Question: “How can we help children’s literacy process?”, which leads us to define the (1.3) Challenge, “In addition to traditional classroom resources, creating exercises from digital resources for children to train writing helping them in their studies.” From this definition, we started the

 

  • (2) Investigate: phase, which helped us to enter a series of questions, the (2.1) Guiding Questions, which would make us focus on what exactly we could work on. Among the numerous questions we generated, one stood out: How to improve children’s fine motor skills through an educational application? In phase (2.2) Guiding Activities/Resources, we carried out research deepening and consulting the theme through scientific articles, the latest news and research on similar products (Benchmarking). One of the highlights of this stage was the reading and assimilation of the thesis “Letra Escolar Brasileira: design of a typographic family for teaching handwriting”, by Professor Sandro Fetter, who provided the font Letra Brasil for us to test and apply in the application. We interviewed 5 professionals in the area of literacy: teachers who brought us a pedagogical basis and what are the problems related to cognitive development, giving visibility to possible opportunities for us to work on something that would really make sense for children in the literacy phase. obtained, we went to (2.3) Analysis and using a Priority Matrix, we defined an Information Architecture that we could approach in the development of the application. The digital product development phase was the most anticipated by all of the team, but we understand that it was essential to dedicate almost 2 months to research and validation of an idea that we wanted to be a reality and that had an impact on education in order to avoid future frustrations with a useless product.

 

  • And step (3) Act: has the first phase of (3.1) Solution, which consolidated our idea through the development of the Skriva application, initially development for iPad, counting on the moment of (3.2) Implementation, when we added it to TestFlight and Apple Store, counting on a continuous improvement of the code and design, considering that several Usability Tests were carried out, both with our target audience (children in the literacy phase) and with potential customers (guardians and teachers), requiring a series of improvements for a product that was in a testing phase. It is in the last phase of the CBL, (3.3) Evaluation, that we apply the review and iteration of the product, allowing us to understand how relevant it was to create an application that allows the use of digital resources, such as the Ipad and Apple Pencil, for children to train the cursive handwriting while developing fine motor skills. The opening of a conversation with schools that want to test Skriva and the feedback from the children themselves, as well as from the teachers, was essential for us to understand that we were on the right track to deliver a product to society, which had the relevance of helping someone. Such results make us extremely happy and satisfied, as our knowledge and dedication have a real and applicable return for Brazilian education and potentially for other countries.
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