Interactive Flashcards for Kids at Home

We made this because we wanted a child to still have something real in their hands. The whole idea was to blend digital technology and physical play into one seamless experience — so that a four-year-old learning what a sea turtle is called is holding a sea turtle, turning it over, carrying it across the room to show somebody. A child gets to stay a child, with real things in both hands. And the screen does the one thing it is genuinely brilliant at. It answers.

Hold up a card, and it comes alive

So we designed a deck of flashcards that a tablet can see. Every card carries a small printed marker in one corner, and the camera already built into an iPad, a tablet or a phone does the rest. Present a card, and the thing on it arrives inside the game with its name said out loud, in Thai and in English.

A sea-turtle flashcard propped against a tablet where the same turtle has surfaced inside a submarine porthole, with starfish, shrimp and jellyfish cards spread across the table — interactive design for kids where a printed card carries a creature into the game

Hold up the turtle, and the turtle surfaces.

Scan a fish and find out which fish it is. Scan a piece of music and hear how it sounds. Animals, sports, the jobs people do — every card brings its own small world along with it, and the vocabulary settles in quietly while a child is busy being delighted by a picture, a sound and two languages arriving at once. The animation moves gently on purpose, unhurried enough for a four-year-old to follow every beat of it.

Then the game asks a question

A few cards in, the game turns playful and starts asking. Who swam past just now? What car drove past just now? The answer is lying face-up on the table somewhere, so the child looks down, digs through the deck, finds the right one and lifts it up to be seen.

Two boys crouch on a wooden floor laying out long rows of Thai and English animal flashcards, sea creatures in one row and wild animals in another, both of them using their hands and the whole floor — the physical half of an interactive learning game designed for children

Sooner or later the whole deck ends up on the floor. That is exactly what we were hoping for.

That small decision is the one we are proudest of, because it answers the question we ask ourselves in every piece of interactive design for kids: where should a child's attention actually sit? Here it sits on the cards, in two hands. The tablet is the friend who asks the questions, sings the answers back and cheers when they land.

Three sets, and every unit plays differently

The cards arrive as three sets, four units to a set, and the third move is where those units start working together. Numbers to add up. English words to practise. Recycling to sort. The parts of a tree, the body and its organs, the five food groups, sports and their equipment, the first steps of music, and the beginnings of coding and computational thinking. Every unit invents its own way of being played, so each one turns up as a fresh surprise.

The addition game is the whole idea in miniature: two bubbles of fish with a plus sign between them, three answers to choose from, and a little submarine that every correct sum carries a bit further down into the deep.

A hand reaches out to tap the answer in a tablet addition game while the flashcards lie spread on the table below — an interactive learning game designed for children aged four to eight

Two bubbles, a plus sign, and a submarine that goes deeper with every right answer.

All of it runs on whatever is already in the house, with an app for both iOS and Android and the card sets on the shelves in shops. Three boxes, three worlds — yourself and music, nature and looking after the planet, your neighbourhood and sport — and every one of them made for four- to eight-year-olds.

The three retail boxes of the Interactive Learning at Home flashcard sets standing in a row, illustrated with a bear cooking, a whale, a yellow submarine and a hippo playing a tuba, each box marked for ages four to eight

Three boxes, three worlds, and every one of them for four- to eight-year-olds.

In 2021 Interactive Learning at Home was given the DEmark Design Excellence Award. A design award rather than a technology one, which felt like exactly the right thing to be recognised for. The fit is the design.

The DEmark Design Excellence Award 2021 trophy, engraved "Interactive Learning at Home, Little Lot Co., Ltd.", standing in front of the three boxed flashcard sets

DEmark Design Excellence Award 2021 — awarded to Interactive Learning at Home.

And it plays best with somebody sitting next to you. A grown-up reading the English out loud, an older sister who already knows which card it is — the deck is easy enough for a four-year-old to lead and interesting enough that everyone at the table wants a turn.

A boy in a yellow shirt and a laughing adult lean over a tablet together at a table at home, one of them holding up a printed car flashcard with open boxed card sets in front of them — designed so a family can play it side by side

The best rounds are the ones somebody plays with you.

Designing the fit between something you can hold and something that lights up is the part we care about most, and when it is right the tablet becomes the best teaching assistant in the house — patient, bilingual, endlessly happy to play the same round again. What we were after was for the best bit to happen off the screen: a card turned over, a word said out loud, and a small hand lifting it up to be seen. If you are dreaming up an interactive product for children, a kids workshop, or an installation that works the way this one does, we would love to hear what you have in mind.