CEWON KIM
Sphero EDU Jr App
Sphero EDU Jr App
11/2020 - 05/2021
Role: Lead UX/UI Designer
Creating wireframes, prototypes, and hi-fi UI assets.
Implementing assets and animation in Unity.
What is Sphero EDU Jr App?
Sphero Edu Jr is an app for very young learners (approximately K-2 grade). Users can reprogram how indi responds to different colors by choosing from a variety of movements, lights, and sounds that appear when you navigate over the associated color tile.
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Control movements with different program directions and animated movements like a celebration dance
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Control lights and choose between solid colors and different light patterns on the top LED
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Control the sounds and songs that indi plays
Indi Configurator
The Indi configurator is the core experience for Indi owners. There are 3 key things we are keeping in mind as design efforts are underway:
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Use a block-based drag and drop paradigm (familiar to users)
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Keep it simple - don’t overdo it with complicated blocks!
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Lean heavily on icons to reduce the need to read
Designed Age 4+
Grade PK-2
Designed for
grade 3-12+
Send the program to the robot
Block coding Canvas Area
Shelf for block components
indi Configurator screes
Process - early sketch
The Indi experience in Sphero Edu Jr is intended to be accessible to all learners, including those with color blindness. While we can adjust colors in software, we cannot change the colors of the physical cards to be more accessible. As such, our solution is to associate unique shapes with colors. In the Sphero Edu app, each color will be represented with an icon and each type of card will have icons to match. This way users will not have to rely solely on color matching or reading; they can instead match shapes. With this simple solution, we should ensure greater accessibility without additional modes or settings.
Color Accessibility
Early Process
TIME Magazine
THE BEST INVENTIONS OF 2021
Teaching Kids to Code
Sphero indi
At its most basic level, coding is a matter of problem solving and pattern recognition. Sphero indi teaches both—no screen required. Instead, kids as young as 4 use different-colored durable tiles to move a robotic car from point A to point B—green tiles increasing its speed, pink tiles telling it to turn 90 degrees left, purple tiles telling it to spin and dance, and so on. “We really wanted to take these abstract concepts and bring them into the physical world,” says Jeff Wiencrot, one of the principal engineers who worked on the product. A student kit priced at $124.99 includes the car and 20 colored tiles to help kids make programming-based puzzles.
—Chad de Guzman
