CiaraApp
An offline learning app for toddlers: 44 decks of picture cards and sounds, two buttons, and nothing else in the way.
- Role
- Product design & React Native development
- Platform
- Android & web · fully offline
- Content
- 44 categories · 427 illustrations
- Users
- 140
The idea
Made for one little girl, then shared.
CiaraApp started with Ciara, a very active little girl who always wants to be doing something. I wanted to make something just for her that kept her busy while she learned. When I saw how much she loved it, I shared it with other parents and their little ones.
Most learning apps for toddlers are built for the store listing: accounts, ads, upsells and noise. Ciara is the opposite. A grown-up opens it, hands over the phone, and a child swipes through bright picture cards that say their names out loud.
I designed it and built it myself in React Native with Expo, so every decision was tested in a real toddler’s hands, not just in Figma. While testing, a child barely one year old pressed Read, listened, and said “Vroom vroom, car!”. That is the whole brief.
Principles
Designed for two users who never read instructions
Two buttons
Back and Ready. No menus, no text input, no scores, no timers. Big cards, big targets, and one swipe to the next picture.
Really offline
Every picture and sound ships inside the app. No accounts, no analytics, no ads, nothing saved. The app never opens a network connection on its own.
Grown-ups behind a gate
Every link that leaves the app, from the privacy policy to feedback, sits behind a parental gate: a sum a toddler can’t solve.
Calm, not sticky
Rewards are gentle. A dancing animal celebrates a finished worksheet for 35 seconds, then stops. The goal is learning, not screen time.
Design + build
Where design and code met
- The colour lives in the content
- Every card carries its own background colour, so the colours deck repaints the whole screen as a child swipes, and the planets story shifts hue planet by planet. Adding a deck is a design decision, not a code change.
- A phone, even in a browser
- The same app runs on the web from a link, no install. On a wide screen it stays a phone-width column on a brand-purple background, because the layout was designed for small hands, not a desktop.
- Offline has a size
- Bundling every sound pushed the Android download past 230 MB. Re-encoding the 27 largest audio files, each checked by ear, brought it down to 104 MB without a missing sound.
- Ready for the store’s rules for children
- A privacy policy inside the app and on the web, camera, microphone and advertising-ID permissions blocked, and a gate on every external link. Facts only, no compliance slogans.
Where it is now
140 users, and on its way to Google Play.
CiaraApp is used by 140 people through the web app and the Android download. It now has 44 decks, including spelling, maths worksheets, nursery rhymes, basic sign vocabulary and first words in French, German, Mandarin and Spanish, and is being prepared for Google Play.
Contact
Have a role or a product in mind?
I'm open to full-time and contract product design roles with agencies and product teams. I reply within one working day.
joy@hijoygirl.com ↗