Acorny.
A Toy Kit and App Making Coding Easy and Fun for Kids
AWARDS.
IDEA Bronze Winner in Concept & Speculative
Indigo Silver Prize in Product Design
A design Award Winner in Education 2022
Tools.
Figma
Year.
2022
Role.
Personal Project
Acorny is a physical toy and coding app designed to support young children in computational thinking. Through Acorny's app, beginners select input and output physical modules, accessing coding tutorials, recommendations, and challenges. This enables them to engage in a variety of activities and explore computational concepts with ease.
Awards & Recognition
🏅Spark Design Gold winner in Concepts & Speculative Design
🥉A’ Design Award 2022 in Education
🥉IDEA International Design Excellence Award Bronze Award in Product Design
🥉Red Dot Design Award Finalist in Design Concept
🏅2022 IF Design Talent Award
🥈Indigo Design Award Silver Prize in Product & Gadget Design
This personal project, initiated outside of company hours, taught me to dedicate time to it progressively. I independently pursued various design awards to enhance my personal brand. I was responsible for designing the UI, UX, Product Video, Layout, Illustration, and selected video frames. I worked with CAD Animation Designer Jaeyoung to share the vision, design principles, and overall concept.
What is Acorny?
Acorny is a thoughtfully designed product that introduces young children to coding in an intuitive and engaging way. The Acorny physical kit features a user-friendly design with interactive elements that make understanding computer processing steps simple and fun.The kit’s core component, the Y-branch module, incorporates LED interactions to visually guide users through the coding process. Components are categorized into input and output functions, allowing children to easily grasp how data flows and is processed, making coding accessible and enjoyable for young learners.
Educational technology faces a challenge
Many existing physical computing products focus heavily on end results, with complex setups that make it hard for children to explore and learn effectively. This creates a gap in identifying the best learning path for young minds.
How can we make coding easy and fun for young children?
Acorny tackles this by combining a physical kit with a dynamic application that simplifies coding education. The app offers tailored programming lessons, challenges, and step-by-step tutorials to teach core coding concepts. By connecting to the user-selected input and output modules, Acorny guides beginners through coding flows and algorithmic thinking, making computational concepts approachable and fun.
Physical Kits
Physical kits are tangible sets that include coding components and supporting materials, allowing hands-on interaction and learning.
Interactive Learning
Tutorial videos, along with an interactive chatbot, enable children to engage in various activities and explore key computational concepts.
Coding Challenges
Expand the possibilities for children to create, explore, and play with computing.
Live Tutoring
A real-time online tutor help young children to complete their practices.
Personalized challenges and visual tutorials
Users can explore coding through interactive lessons, personalized recommendations, and engaging challenges. Tutorials adapt to the selected modules, visually mapping coding processes and algorithms, empowering young learners to build confidence and curiosity in computational thinking.
Storyboarding
To effectively communicate the Acorny concept, I designed a storyboard and concept video to showcase the product’s features and user flow. Bright, cheerful colors, especially vivid yellow, were used to create an engaging and playful tone, aligning with the young target audience.
Educational Technology, what's next?
If you come across Acorny Design of products and video, I'd love to hear what you think and how you would imagine about the next gen Educational Technology!
