Mood Magic
Mood Magic
a voice application to help children learn language around emotion
Starting from one of my favorite brainstorming exercises “100 bad ideas,” Mood Magic was originally “Carmen’s Dance Party,” inspired by my young cousin whose parents kept a custom dance party playlist as a car activity.
The original idea was an app that featured a DJ inspired by Carmen Miranda that would make fruit puns and give children a goofy play space. As we explored the idea, we realized that we needed to add value beyond a simple playlist of music and some jokes that could quickly become stale. As we did research, talking to parents, reading books on developmental psychology, and speaking with a child psychologist, we came to understand that addressing children’s emotional states and educating them on how to interpret their own physical states would be of enormous value.
We wrote and commissioned songs, developed educational games and trivia that would offer more context around these songs, and created a fun persona who would guide children through the physical sensation of emotions and give them language to describe those feelings.
Using non-invasive gamification and freemium design techniques to support great content, we’ve consistently achieved long user retention times and all five-star reviews.
