I can see from the sales numbers that Little Digits is being used in schools, quite a few in fact, as they can download the app via the volume purchase program at a discount. On average a school buys 20 copies of the app.

However as a developer you have no idea which schools are using your app, so I was happy when teacher Sacha (@onlinesacha) of new school Montessorischool de Amstel sent me the picture above.

If you are an educator and use Little Digits in your classroom, please do get in touch.

As of writing this post, Little Digits is currently number 1 in the education chart in the UK (shown above).

It is top 10 in 17 countries and top 20 in 32 countries (in education). Hurray.

I just loaded the App Store like I do every Thursday to see what has been featured, and Little Digits was the first thing I saw. Editors’ Choice!! I am jumping for joy, thank you people at Apple.

Introduction

I am an artist/designer/inventor of playful installations, based in London.  I wrote this on my site:

“I use technology to make the unimaginable come to life. Inventing new approaches that explore play, human behaviour and engagement through interaction design and the visual arts. My mission is to create installations, digital toys, play spaces and experiences for everyone, that take us out of the everyday and fill us with joy and wonder.

My works aim to:
– be immersive and participatory
– stimulate curiosity, allow us to make believe, explore and discover our imaginations
– encourage creativity and our own confidence in self expression
– let us collaborate with others and to become a performer
– allow us think differently about ourselves and others, challenging our existing perspectives
– get us moving our bodies in unusual ways
– make us smile”

I realised that whilst I really enjoy creating installation work in spaces, I also wanted to put my ideas out to a wider audience in the form of products that you could download at home.

Getting started

In October 2010 I relaunched my personal portfolio website, with a section for digital toys, saying “Taking the same values and ideas I have for playful experiences, and making them for a distributed audience. Aimed at mobile and home entertainment systems“.

(photo source)

In 2011 after finishing some big screen games for London 2012, I started working on the toy car app Makego.  I showed the work for the first time at the Playful conference in October 2011, the app was released in February 2012 (more on that another time).

The name

At the end of March 2012, after the launch of Makego, I was at a Smartphone and Tablet Conference organised by TIGA (independent games developers association). On this day I felt motivated that this was what I wanted to do for a living.  I decided that to do this long term, I needed to build up a brand that children and parents could remember, rather than publishing apps under my own name.

The next day when discussing this with my wife, she came up with the name Cowly Owl. “vachement chouette” is a French saying meaning something is “really cool” or “really nice”, a little bit old fashioned, perhaps mostly used by children. Vache also means cow and chouette means owl, so translated vachement chouette is a cow-like owl, in this case Cowly Owl.

I announced the startup via Twitter on 13th April and put up a holding page, then started working on Little Digits.

Logo development

I had two main ideas for the logo. The first one to have really simple big eyes and a beak facing you.  The second having a cow-like owl, an owl with cow spots and cow tail, sat in a tree facing towards the moon.  In the end I decided to go with the former, as it felt friendlier, more approachable.

After playing with colours to find those that I thought would fit the brand, I created various iterations of the logo, changing minor details such as eye positioning, beak size, trying to avoid the crazy cross-eyed owl look to find a balance of a young owl but not a baby.  The rough edges to the shapes give them a papercraft cut out feeling, as well as the faint paper texture on the pink and blue parts.

I wanted to the text to look like it was from a typewriter, giving it an old book feel, and offsetting a more serious tone against the cuter owl. The placement and size of the text used in this way to make up the chest of the owl.

Animated Identity

I needed an animated ident that would play on promo videos and whenever someone opened an app.  My idea was to have an owl that was in hibernation, would be surprised & woken up by your presence and then read the letters as they appeared beneath. I made a really rough version in Flash to use as a starting point.

Ben Hanbury, designer and animator created the above animation in After Effects. We went through 5 or so iterations to get to the final version. He had the lovely idea to make the logo shape wobble, making it look like a paper stop motion animation.

The music was composed by PitStop Productions who regularly do sound work on games. I asked them to make it happy, magical, a classic Disney feel, rather than some hyperactive kids TV shows that you get today.  I wanted it to have an English, classic, countryside, curiosity, story telling feel. A 4 year old girl provided her voice for the ident (and Little Digits).

I’m really happy with how it turned out, so a big thank you to Ben and Pitstop.

What now?

I am now working on the next app, hopefully due out in the summer.

To keep up with developments, do join the mailing list above or Like us on Facebook.

Very happy that Little Digits has been featured by Apple in New & Noteworthy this week, our first front page feature! If you don’t already own it, please go buy it and help me climb the charts.

Little Digits has had a bit of a tough time with user reviews on the App Store…

The Good

“This app ingeniously prompts kids to experience arithmetic with their fingers — I can’t think of another app which get kids using their brain, and all of their fingers, at the same time. More generally, the app is elegant and RESPECTFUL: one thing that this developer gets right, which seems astonishingly RARE, is that there are no shoddy advertisements, or trapdoor buttons for in-app purchases, that ruin the experience for the little ones. Ultimately it’s educational — it teaches adding and subtracting in a really engaging way!”

“Lots of learning opportunities with this App in number sense, basic math skills and number vocabulary through the use of 3 senses, touch, hearing and speech. The recording of your voice saying the numbers is a terrific. The App will hold the interest of a child through the basics of learning the numbers through learning and review of basic addition and subtraction facts 0-10. This would be a great App for the older developmentally disabled.”

“If we touch the screen with three fingers, we see three on the screen. It’s a simple and engaging technique that works well with kids. I’m confused by the poor reviews for an app that carries creative, quality production. I hope to see more from this developer.”

The Bad

“Stops at four. I read all the negative reviews and should’ve paid attention. Now I am out 2 bucks. This app is so disappointing. Stops after 4. Deleted!”

“App crashes after counting to 4. Got this app for my kid after reading rave reviews online. But it crashes all the time. If the developer is reading this, it’s only fair I be refunded!”

“Only counts to 5 ! Not very good game,should have been FREE, Save your money.”

“I just loaded this on my iPad mini and it simply doesn’t work past three digits. First app that I regret buying.”

“This does not work. Sometimes it will count up to 5 if I am lucky, but I can never get it to count any further, on my iPad 3.”

Why the bad reviews?

On the iPad, by default multitasking gestures are turned on. This means if you put 4 fingers down and move at all, you either close the app, switch to another or the task bar. As this app uses up to 10 fingers, you need to turn off multitasking gestures.

This warning was written as part of the app store description text and on the about screen within the app. This wasn’t clear enough, so update 1.03 just released has a popup alert (in 20 languages) at the start and every time you trigger the gesture, to remind you to turn it off. Don’t worry this popup is unobtrusive and goes away on its own after a few seconds. Hopefully this will help solve the bad reviews.

Sadly you can’t reply directly to those people that have posted their anger in a review instead of emailing Cowly Owl for support. Those people that have emailed with questions have always gone away happy that the app works as expected.

How to get your users to rate your app

This is the method that most apps use, a popup that asks you to rate the app. This will often come once you’ve been using the app for a good period of time, or reached a far point in the game, so that you are more likely to write a good review.

Not only are these popups annoying, but in apps aimed at children they are very problematic. When a 4 year old is faced with the above, what do they do? Go and ask for help or press a random button, making them leave the app and go back to the app store. Also, you want the parent/carer/teacher to write a review, not a young child, so why bother them with this popup?

Why are reviews important?

Many people see an app icon, skim the first part of the description, flick through the screenshots and read the reviews from other people before deciding if they should buy the app. If there are bad reviews saying it doesn’t work, they are less likely to buy the app.

What can you do?
Cowly Owl is an independent company made up of 1 person, Chris O’Shea.  Not backed by a large company, or funded by investors, the last app needs to be profitable to help pay for creating the next app.  It’s not a goldmine, this industry is hard for the small guys (read “Can independent developers make money from children’s apps?“), so I need all the help I can get to improve the income generated from these apps.

So if you already own a Cowly Owl app, and would like to see more released, please leave a positive review on the App Store.

If you have any questions or problems, please contact me via the support pages.

Many thanks!

Little Digits has now updated to version 1.03. As an app that uses 10 fingers, you must turn off the multitasking gestures on your iPad, as 4 or more fingers will make the app close, switching you back to the home screen or another app.  This is a setting within iOS, beyond a developers control.

Although this instruction was within the app description & about screen, it wasn’t clear enough. You now see the above message once when the app starts, and every time you trigger the multitasking gesture.

This instruction has also been translated into 20 languages, as well as the settings for the app, as shown below.

So please update your app and leave a positive review on the app store.

We are very happy that Apple have included Little Digits in the new iPad TV commercial, in France and Germany. Click the links to watch.

Our first app Makego has just been updated to 1.02

- Santa Claus vehicle, deliver presents to children down the chimney
- Improved vehicle select screen with preview of vehicle & swipe gesture
- Removed external social media links
- App now under the Cowly Owl brand

Download it now on the App Store. Merry Christmas everyone!

We are very happy indeed that Little Digits has been included in the App Store Best of 2012 feature in the United Kingdom & Ireland.

It is listed under Hidden Gems: “These fantastic apps are the outliers – they don’t fit neatly into categories, but they impressed us by riding trends or forging new ones”.

If you haven’t already, please do buy the app & help us fund the next set of apps for kids in 2013.

itunes.com/AppStoreBestof2012 (opens iTunes/App Store)