ABC Mouse

Studio Exploration - www.abcmouse.com

I chose ABC Mouse's Age of Learning’s production and creative team as 
my studio exploration.  I use the program several times a week with my 
children and have found the site to be very inspirational in showing what 
Flash based programming can do to create educational interactive programs 
designed for young children to be used with the help of there parents.  The 
site is designed for young users to become ready to enter elementary grade 
school.  The creative team consists of over "40 visual artists, designers,
writers, composers, musicians, voice-over artists, and programmers" to create 
the site that holds thousands of "online books, educational games, puzzles 
and art activities."   (www.abcmouse.com/about-us)

From a user perspective the site is well organized and offers an amazing amount 
of games and activites to choose from.  Through the use of sounds, music, reading, animated teachers, and your own self-created Avatar you become engaged as 
being part of the program both as the parent along with your child.  This type of programming and design is very effective in achieving a fun user experience that
helps the child learn through fun interaction and positive reinforcement by earning 
"tickets" that they can spend on items like aquariums, pets and even decorating 
there own "room". 

From a technical perspective I can see why it takes so many people and so much
talent to create a site like this one.  Mainly because you have to build it in a way that 
is so user friendly that a small child can learn to master a mouse, and a parent
doesn't go crazy trying to teach there little one how to click, hold down and move a 
mouse all at the same time.  (This happens in the exercise of working on a puzzle.)  
When creating this, the programmer would have to build it in such a way that the user dictates where the puzzle piece goes and then learns from the outcome whether or 
not the piece fits or needs to be moved to the correct place.  This is where I can see 
the use of Action Script comes into place because it no longer is controlled by the 
designer but rather the user.

Please check out www.abcmouse.com to see for your-self how much Flash can do!