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Duck Duck Moose has always been slightly in front of the pack. Early on in the days of iOS apps they developed a little musical app called Wheels on the Bus which is well known in Pre-K circles and continues to be a well recognized and successful app that demonstrates the some of the capacity of mobile devices to engage children in ways that support their learning and development.
GeekDad profiled Duck Duck Moose over a year ago, and since then they have continued to produce apps aimed at young children that support early learning and development around music, math and literacy in ways that are playful and engaging for children. Even more recently, Duck Duck Moose released an album on iTunes and it was this development we thought was worth another conversation. We now see a children's app development team beginning to branch out into a different market and perhaps they are showing the way for how smaller independent developers can survive.
So, we put a few questions to one of the company's co-founders, Caroline Hu Flexer, about how things have been developing and what we can expect from Duck Duck Moose in the future.
GeekDad: What has been most important in maintaining Duck Duck Moose's early childhood focus and the quality of your work?
Caroline Hu Flexer: Looking at the world through a child's eyes is the most important thing that we do. We spend a lot of time working with children, observing how they play, and testing our apps with them during our design process. We have a very collaborative, open-ended design process in which the three of us all contribute throughout. Our process is iterative which is the secret sauce to coming up with good ideas. It goes a little something like this: Observe children. Brainstorm. Prototype. Build. Test with lots of children and parents. Learn. Refine. Repeat all steps again. And again. And again. Because there are only three of us, we are able to continue to iterate until the end, and some of our best ideas often come at the end.
GD: You've just begun releasing your apps onto Android, can we expect to see more Android apps and what are your thoughts about that space and the potential for children and families there?
CHF: Yes! Itsy Bitsy Spider will be coming to Android soon. In terms of potential, it's a bit early to tell since Wheels on the Bus has only been live on Android for less than two weeks, but we've been getting many requests for Android apps for months. We've discovered that many families are dual iOS/Android households. The kids want Duck Duck Moose apps on Mom and Dad's phones.
GD: Music is a big part of your background, can you tell us a bit about that and how the new album has evolved out of an app development company - and the benefits of it?
CHF: Co-Founder Michael Flexer and I are trained as classical musicians. Michael plays the cello, and I play the violin. From the beginning, we have produced the music in our apps ourselves. We launched our first album Duck Duck Music since we heard how parents and children enjoy the music in our apps, which combines a classical music style with popular children’s songs. Duck Duck Music includes classical arrangements of 21 popular children's songs, with voice, violin, viola, cello and drums.
GD: Wheels on the Bus remains a really well recognized and top selling app - what do you think it is about that one that works so well?
CHF: Our then-two-year-old daughter inspired Wheels on the Bus since it was her favorite song. We knew how much children love singing the Wheels on the Bus and doing the hand motions. We designed and tested the interactivity, graphics and audio with young children. We’ve also seen that older children and siblings enjoy recording their own voices and renditions, so the app ends up having longer play value.
Wheels on the Bus also won several awards (Parents' Choice Gold Award, KAPi award for "Best Children's App" at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show). As I've mentioned before, GeekDad was one of the first blogs to discover Duck Duck Moose and Wheels on the Bus, right after it launched in January 2009. As one of the first interactive apps for young children, Wheels on the Bus received a lot of attention in the media from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Macworld, Gizmodo, and many other blogs. It has also been featured by Apple on the App Store, in their retail stores, and in Steve Jobs’ keynote unveiling the iPad 2.
GD: And, what for the future? You have moved into music, is Duck Duck Moose going to become all transmedia on us and venture into other media? What can we expect?
CHF: We'll see how the transmedia plays out at Duck Duck Moose. We're still a small, lean team, and we will continue to focus on interactive media. No plush toys for now. We still think there’s a lot of opportunity in educational mobile apps for children, and we love working with young children since they are so curious, imaginative, eager to learn, and playful.
You can find the growing collection of Duck Duck Moose apps and music over at their website.
