Colors & Choices

I do agree that this is vibrant though. 

First off, the favorite of the lovely commenters seems to be the color palette for the teletubbies, which I found interesting, because that particular color palette was actually not popular in KidsTeam. The favorite color palette of KidsTeam happened to be Sesame Street follwed closely by Secret Agent Oso, and hence those two color schemes were what the app's color scheme will be.
So I guess that just seems to show the wide disparity two small groups can have with color
preferences.

On to the next order of busines: a sticky note update. Whatever happened to all those sticky notes I was writing? Did I ever finish writing them all? The answer. finally, is yes.
So what will become of the massive pile of colorful sticky notes you ask? They are to be painstakingly sorted and categorized.

Others of you are probably wondering something along the lines of the wonderful Mr. Peacher: "I am still wondering about that pile of sticky notes. While all of the ideas cannot be as fabulous as magical spaghetti, how do you decide what ideas are usable?"
The answer is it depends on what project we were reseaching/helping/designing for that particular session.


The sticky notes in all their glory.

For example, we had a program team come in recently with some designs and wanted feedback. (Remember the clickable frogs and draggable apples people?) KidsTeam critiqued their designs and told them which styles and colors they liked and whether everything made sense. In particular, KidsTeam really didn't like certain items that were being used in these problems: a thimble and a set of chattering teeth. These just seemed like very strange items to have in problems for kids. Why weren't they something more normal, like strawberries or bouncy balls? Of course, KidsTeam also had a whole host of other suggestions as well.
The product team then took that information and decided what they could feasibily change with the time and monetary limitations they had. They changed the background color. They went with the cuter style design. And they got rid of the thimble and chattering teeth. They couldn't really change much else though. What they decided to change after participating in the KidsTeam session was up to them.


The beginning of the sorting madness.

And that's the normal process if a product team (other the voacbulary app KidsTeam has been working on for months) comes in for a session.
For the vocabulary app, it's more involved.
There's a literacy expert to start, who helps put limits on what kids can and should be learning from this app. There was a focus group of young children to help all the KidsTeam members get a better idea of who the intended audience actually is. In short, the app is going to be much, much simpler than most of the fun crazy ideas. There won't be aliens or helicopter cars or salt shakers full of glitter. Which is a shame.
But there is hope for the magical spagetti!
If the extremely simple version of the app is sucessful when it is eventually released, there may be harder and more complex versions that eventaually follow with some of the fun ideas like bedrooms that turn into candy and balloon races in the sky.
So at this point, it's not eliminating any ideas, per se. It's tabling fun ideas fot possible future use and simplifying the themes of KidsTeam ideas into their basic form. So, for instance, this version will probably have fun interactions as well, it will just be jumping on the bed instead of the whole room turning into a disco party.
Did the color choices of KidsTeam surprise you? Is the lack of magical spagetti in the first app just too disappointing?