Colouring Outside the Lines: Design Principles for Educating Young Minds

The fundamentals of creating stuff for kids

When creating anything for children, even more so educational material, understanding the basics of engagement is only the beginning. Bright, appealing colours and age-appropriate content are both essential, but they have to be presented in a way that is both familiar and new.

Children learn best when they’re having fun. Creating a learning environment that engages them in some form of play is the best way to utilise their attention. Creating educational content starts with clearly defining what needs to be taught. What are the core messages? What are some interesting ways that information can be presented? 

Of course, coming up with ‘interesting ways to present information’ isn’t as simple as it sounds. Traditional design thinking methods are very useful in the initial stages of creating educational products. The double diamond framework, typically used to guide innovative thinking, is particularly useful when creating something for a younger audience and entertainment is just as important as education.
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The most successful pieces of children’s entertainment are all layered, clever, and respect the young audience’s intelligence.

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Expansive creativity

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The conceptual space for children can be extremely broad. Which is what makes the process fun, and also what makes it challenging. Designing for children can be like “designing for aliens”. And yes, that’s a direct quote from a client of ours.

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“If you get stuck, the answer is probably to exaggerate it.
Bigger. Sillier. More everything.”

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One of the most important elements in the creative development process is worldbuilding. The world serves as a springboard for any storylines and has to be able to carry any metaphors or comparisons used to explain concepts.

We’ll traditionally start this process by trying to uncover a relatable protagonist to guide the children through the various educational touchpoints. That character and elements from the world can then be leveraged across different applications (such as games, videos, written texts, worksheets, and so on), creating a familiarity that reinforces memory.

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The psychology behind learning mechanisms for kids

Engaging a child's attention through games, stories, and role-play helps make educational content stick. This taps into their natural instincts to explore and experiment. We regularly collaborate with educators, play therapists, and other child development experts to ensure our designs meet both educational and psychological needs.

There are also well-established tenets to play therapy that we use to create educational content that is both fun and effective. The concepts we lean on heavily in our work at Bubbleship include:

• Safety and security‍

Creating a safe environment allows children to relax and be open to taking in new information.
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• Mastery and competence

Creating activities that allow children to be challenged and then succeed creates a sense of accomplishment and enhances self esteem, ultimately increasing engagement with the materials and positive learning outcomes.

•Emotional expression‍

Activities which facilitate the expression of a wide range of emotions, particularly ones that can be challengings for young children, can help them develop the skills to understand and articulate their feelings.

•Problem solving and conflict resolution‍

Activities that encourage problem-solving and decision making, such as board games or structured play scenarios, support children in developing skills to navigate conflict.

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Testing & feedback

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At Bubbleship, testing is at the heart of our process. Children’s raw, unfiltered feedback helps us refine our concepts. They can and will tell you what resonates and what doesn’t– often more clearly than adults will.

We’ve found significant success with creating expansive, exaggerated creative concepts and then allowing user feedback to guide where we reel things in– or push the envelope even further.

The testing phase also comes with other considerations around feasibility. Who will be delivering the material? Does it require specific kinds of technology? It’s important to remember that not all classrooms have access to the same resources. Ultimately, the key is to balance three factors: Learning intentions, Engagement, and feasibility.

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Conclusion

Designing educational experiences for children is a delicate balance of creativity, psychology, and fun. One of the most important lessons we’ve learned is that you don’t have to dumb things down for children. At Bubbleship, we combine world-building, character development, and evidence-based psychology to create experiences that engage, educate, and excite young minds. By embracing smart, playful content and collaborating with experts, we push the boundaries of what learning can be. In a child’s world, the answer is often simpler—or stupider—than you think. The trick is to never underestimate their intelligence and to always make learning fun.

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