TAMU Ideathon - Winner for Best UI/UX
Role: Product Designer
November 2025
Kinect is an educational platform for children aged 5-12 that encourages hands-on learning and creativity
across topics such as art, writing, life skills, and science. It connects children with a global
community
in a safe, AI-free environment, allowing them to share their work, collaborate, and learn through doing
rather than consuming.
This project prototype was developed under 24 hours as part of a hackathon-styled compteition called
Ideathon.
Design an app that creates safer, more authentic online communities that promote healthy digital interactions.
We conducted user research by interviewing parents to understand their concerns regarding children's engagement with technology. We explored competitors such as DIY.org and analyzed cultural and accessibility gaps. Insights from these studies helped us define user needs and design a solution that balances creativity, learning, and safety.
We developed an information architechture diagram on Miro to get an idea of what pages we need and how they relate, keeping ideal user flows in mind. However, what made this process different was the fact that we had to prioritize which screens are most important to develop in our final protoype due to our time contraint in the competition. After that, we developed rough wireframe sketches of our MVP screens before moving to Figma to create high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes.
We created an interactive prototype in Figma that showcases the main user flows of our app,
including
the login, an interactive map showcasing what countries other users are posting from, an explore
page,
and a creative studio to post based on prompts and fun topics.
The UI is inspired by 2000's childrens books. The UI contains vibrant colors,an uncluttered
layout,
and
large text
to make it more accessible and easy to understand for young users. The explore page only allows
for
limited emoji reactions to ensure a safe community and no opportunity for bullying. Badges
gamify
the
app, incentifiving kids to take on fun projects and engage with other users.
The map page and filter system allows children to gain exposure to other parts of the world, and
learn
more about the world they live in outside their immediate environment; a major feature that
adresses
a
gap in current kid-focused platforms.
Important features that are part of our launch plan include an automated screening system that
flags
and
removes
harmful content children might post.
We spent a lot of time refining our idea to ensure that it not only stood out, but also addressed
the
needs of both children and their parents. We had some technical challenges concerning Figma and
our
time
frame as well. We have found solutions to those technicalities that we want to address soon.
Half of us were using Figma for the first time, and are very proud of learning the tool and
developing
this prototype under such a short time frame. We are also proud of addressing such a current and
prevalent concern that could make a difference in families' lives.
We learned a lot about user-centered design, collaborating with new people and managing tasks as
a
team.
We also learned a lot during our research about the current state of creativity decline and the
issues
with children being exposed to technology.
The next steps are to conduct usability studies on the prototype with kids to ensure that the
product
suits them, and reiterate. We will then develop the working app, launch it on the play store and
apple
store, and advertise to families across the globe. We want to offer more accessibilty and
engagement
features, such as screen readers and hosted events.
Our design was reviewed by judges from Google, Accenture,
Waymo, and Texas
A&M University. We placed 3rd
for Best UI/UX.
We did it !!!
Team Members: Sahasra Boinpally, Maeesha Mahreen, Zayna Sayyed, Asbah Talal
