Toca Boca: Social Play on the iPad

Toca Boca is a European App Development team that are approaching the whole app business in a different way to many of the developers out there in the children's app space. Their first two apps, Helicopter Taxi and Toca Boca Tea Party, are perfect examples of an app development company who have seen play and the playfulness of touch screen devices as valuable for learning the the holistic development of our children.

Toca Bocahas evolved out of serious consideration of touchscreens and mobile devices. The team came to app development through research and development work looking at magazines and emerging tablet computers, however very quickly this turned to how children were engaging with smartphones and other touch devices. As Bjorn Jeffery at Toca Boca told me:

We had seen this before when it came to smart phones too -- kids using these devices and having their first interactive media experience. Using a mouse requires certain motor skills that kids of a certain age don't have, and therefore a lot of products intended for them were inaccessible. However -- even if this new touchscreen hardware was perfect, the available software for kids was not.

And, what that means is, the early apps and interfaces they were looking at were not playful enough.

To address this, we started looking both at what was in the App Store at the moment but more importantly - how kids actually play in real life. When laying these two pieces of research beside each other, it was clear that the games and books side were adequately covered but many of the other ways of playing were not. This in turn led us to toy design and looking at the characteristics of blockbuster toys and how they have been designed in order to stimulate different emotional needs children have.

What Toca Boca have turned to is how to make apps that engage children in domestic role playing in a digital environment. Domestic roleplay, or social play is very important to young children's development. They play games that mimic the world around them like washing dishes, cooking food, playing doctors and nurses to try and further understand how relationships work in these spaces. Children are constantly trying to make sense of the world they live in. The Toca Boca apps should never replace this play, but can supplement it and encourage children to engage in social play.

Two recent apps, Toca Doctor and Toca Hair Salon both do this really well. In simple, playful environments they let children take on the role of doctor or hairdresser with ease and fun. Toca Doctor is essentially a diagnostics game that aligns different game environments to cure disease and injury in different parts of the body that a child can select. As a hairdresser in Toca's hair salon you can comb, cut, blow wave, color and shave hair (and take a photo of it when you are done). The actual technical design is not complex, the thought behind how to design these in a way that work for children aged 2 to 5 years is. Toca Boca have captured the essence of social play well in these apps, but they have done it best in Toca Tea Party.

Toca Tea Party can be played by up to four children. It is a digital tea party right there on the iPad that works because the device sits on the table and the table is just an extension of the tea party interface on the iPad. Children choose their food and drink, their plate and cup type. There is a radio to control for music and I've watched children use this app as a way to inspire real tea parties, or sit down with their soft toys and play tea party through the app. The nice thing is when drinks spill (and they do on the app) the child uses a digital cloth to wipe it up. And sure, this should not mean we don't encourage our children to play real tea parties, but it is a nice way to play the game sometimes when we'd prefer to avoid the mess.

Toca Boca have playful augmented reality helicopters and robot building apps. Many of their apps have been reviewed by GeekDad writers, you'll find links to those reviews below.

I will continue to recommend Toca Boca because they are focused on creating sandboxes for young children to play in. And, while sandbox environments may frustrate gamers - the way preschool children play is different, they don't need leaderboards or badges or endless goal setting. They need something else, which Toca Boca understand well. They say:

We've tried to make digital products that are open-ended and that stimulate different types of play. Through this, there is learning when it comes to broader issues such as turn-taking or encouraging collaboration but perhaps not as much when it comes to ABCs and 123s. This has been a deliberate decision on our part and one that we will be sticking to in our upcoming products too.

And, fair enough. I've previously written about the fact we have enough ABC and 123 apps. But, social play apps? Well, I'm looking forward to seeing others take up this challenge and see how we can create digital spaces on mobile devices that allow children to explore the social and emotional, as well as the intellectual side of themselves.

• Practice Treating Ailments with Toca Doctor (wired.com)
• Shuttle Passengers Around Your House With Helicopter Taxi on Your iPhone/iPad (wired.com)
• Gather Some Companions for a Toca Tea Party(geekmom.com)