Samsung has announced the launch of the Samsung Safety Screen application that helps users, especially young children, hold their mobile devices at an ideal viewing distance from their eyes.

Available for free to all Android devices on the Google Play store, the Samsung Safety Screen runs in the background on mobile devices and can even be password-enabled by parents. Employing advanced facial recognition software, a friendly animation pops up shutting down the screen when the device is held too close the eye, unlocking only once the device is held at the minimum recommended safe distance.

According to the Vision Council*, there is an increase in myopia that scientists attribute to a mix of genetic and environmental factors, including increasing near-range activities such as the use of digital devices, and decreasing exposure to natural light through outdoor activities. Digital eye strain can also affect children and teens, whose eyes may fatigue after long periods of use.

Tarek Sabbagh, Head of IT and Mobile Division at Samsung Gulf Electronics commented, “The usage of electronic devices, such as mobiles and tablets, is increasing extremely fast, within all age groups, from entertainment such as watching movies, to gaming and lately education where many schools started using the tablets in their curriculum. We noticed that children spend extended time using their devices, holding them too close to their eyes, which is not ideal and might cause damage to their sight. Hence, in Samsung, as leaders in innovation, we also care for the health and safety of our consumers. Therefore, we are introducing today an innovative app that helps protect users eyes by reminding them to their devices at a safe distance.”

Developed by Samsung Gulf Electronics in collaboration with Leo Burnett MENA with an aim to deliver innovation that transforms people’s lives, the Samsung Safety Screen application has already been awarded at the recent Dubai Lynx awards. Earlier this year, among other regional innovations, Samsung introduced KalimaLock – a smart application aimed to revive the use of the Arabic language among younger audiences. The Samsung-developed KalimaLock application teaches users to write and pronounce words in Arabic, as well as providing their many meanings and connotations.

* https://www.thevisioncouncil.org/content/digital-eye-strain/kids

With the bright, interactive screens on today’s mobile devices, children love playing with them—maybe too much. “It can be a great challenge taking back a smartphone from a kid; they cry their eyes out,” noted Hyungbo Sim, a UX designer at Samsung Electronics and father to a young boy.

But Sim’s smartphone has Kids Mode installed, which means that once his son has reached his daily limit for using the device, the cute Crocro character from the app appear to doze off, locking the device. “He brings my smartphone back to me voluntarily after Crocro falls asleep, saying he’s done. It’s amazing.”

Kids Mode is Samsung’s service which lets parents control the content their children have access to when they use a mobile device and for how long they can use it each day. But more than that, Kids Mode is also fun and natural for children to use, specially designed for them at all levels, from the physical interface to the graphics to the content. To get a better sense of how Kids Mode was created, the Samsung Newsroom talked with some of its designers and developers—including designer Sim.

Making a Safe Space for Children to Play

Kids Mode had its origins in the Galaxy Tab 3 Kids, a tablet Samsung designed expressly for children. “It was in late 2013 that Galaxy Tab 3 Kids was launched globally,” recalled Jongin Lee, Senior Manager of Service R&D Team. “Later on, we saw that kids were increasingly sharing their parents’ smartphones, so we asked ‘Why not install Kids Mode on smartphones in the first place, so parents could hand their device to their kids and let them play with it safely?’”

“The focus of the original version was to assure parents they could let their children use their smartphones without worrying,” said Sim. “But then we thought it would be better if we could make it interesting for kids.”

Stimulating Imaginations Through Fun

The developers and designers focused on creating a world that was fun and natural for children, so they would enjoy using it. Instead of focusing on text, like for regular platforms for grown-ups, Kids Mode focused on a more organic storytelling that children could explore on their own.

“An app’s graphic elements are about entertaining kids,” said Jookyung Woo, UX designer. “There needed to be storytelling, so that a child can imagine what happens next. Kids Mode doesn’t have any text. The graphic user interface should stimulate their imagination, based on the story.”

“Kids Mode does not limit how children use the smartphone, but allows them to explore and play in a safe environment, just like in the real world,” said Woo. “Kids learn by touching. To develop a UX for children, it was very important that the interface naturally encourages children to touch and try the buttons and move on to the next step.”

Part of that storytelling approach also meant having cute characters to interact with. At first there was just a simple crocodile, but now Kids Mode uses four colorful characters to help guide children through its fun world: Crocro the crocodile, Cooki the sloth, Bobby the beaver and Lisa the bird.

“They’ve been upgraded to 3D and they look cuter now, too, with more facial expressions so children relate more easily,” said Woo. “In the past, kids’ characters would be good and bad. But in Kids Mode, there are no bad-guy characters, just different ones. Every character has a different personality: the sloth is lazy but he also likes things, the bird sings and dances, the beaver likes to paint and the crocodile enjoys decorating.”

“Kids Mode is the only Samsung app that features characters,” added Wonje Mok of the Service R&D Team.

More than just fun, though, these characters also are designed to teach children. Children can help Bobby brush his teeth, or help Crocro get dressed. “Children should want to dance, wash and play the way their favorite characters do,” said Sim. “It should be fun to help them develop.”

The native apps designed for Kids Mode also use these characters—for instance, Bobby hosts the Kids Drawing app, while Lisa appears on Kids Music and Kids Magic Voice.

“Parents liked Kids Mode, but how to make it usable from the perspective of children emerged as another challenge,” said Sim. “So a music app was added, and then Kids Drawing, which lets children draw on an empty canvas, color in coloring books and draw in sand. The concept was to stimulate children’s creativity and intelligence development. Different contents for different countries were added as well.”

Facing the Challenges

Throughout development, the developers and designers never stopped refining and improving Kids Mode. “The process was not easy,” said NamSuk Koo, Developer on the Mobile R&D team. “We were not creating an app for adults, so even after we finished the app, we were not sure if children would really like it.”

In addition to optimizing the app for children and making it fun, they also had to deal with many technical challenges. “Kids Mode is mostly an animated app” said Koo. “It was quite challenging to synchronize the motion. On top of that, we had to deal with battery usage and then memory and then heat, because of the size of the app. Sometimes we had to start all over.”

“At an early stage, the problem was with battery consumption,” said Keunchang Hur, Developer on the Mobile R&D Team. “Since there were no apps from Samsung or other developers to compare, we approached Kids Mode from an adult’s point of view on issues like power consumption or text. It was difficult to get other ‘grown-up’ members to understand those points.”

“It took so long to convince everyone,” said Woo. “Some people even wondered why there should be a cloud in the background. That’s natural given that we tried to understand everything from an adult’s point of view. The graphics were quite strange as well. People didn’t understand why a crocodile should appear at all. That’s why I created a backstory for the characters.”

Constantly Refining for a Child’s Point of View

Getting the interface just right for the inquisitive, grasping hands of children also required plenty of fine-tuning. “I found that children like unpredictable things,” said Gyusik Kim, Manager of Service R&D Team.

“That made me realize that I have to think from a kid’s point of view. I can anticipate to some extent what adults like, but there is no such thing as logic for how children think.”

“Some children would touch the display so hard, the distinction between a long touch and a regular touch was not clear,” Sim said. “So simple touching became the main interface, not dragging or double-touching or long touches.”

For Woo, who earned her nursing teacher’s license while on maternity leave, she brought a strong interest in child development to the project. “Kids Mode was the first project I had right after I got the license,” she said.

Other developers tried thinking more like a child. “Rather than trying to study and analyze, I tried to become a child again,” said Jaechan Ahn, Developer on the Mobile R&D team. “I even started watching kids TV channels.”

“I’m lucky that I like Disney characters,” said Jeun Park, from the Service R&D Team. “Am I some sort of ‘kidult’? Maybe that’s why I like kids.”

“I’m trying to be childish all the time,” said Lee with a laugh.

Most children find long car trips horribly dull, but keeping them occupied by buying interactive pop-up book apps can be expensive. But what other choice do parents have to keep their child entertained during a protracted drive? Or at a nice restaurant, during a long dinner, what can a parent do if their 4-year-old suddenly starts crying? For many parents, the easiest solution is giving the child a mobile device, like a smartphone or a tablet. Children love their bright, flashy images and intuitive, responsive interfaces, and are happy to spend hours watching videos and playing games. But how to protect children from inappropriate online content and limit them from using the device too much without spending too much on an expensive, complicated monitoring service?

Samsung’s Kids Mode provides a solution to these problems, creating a free and easy-to-use interface on smartphones and tablets that is simple to control and monitor, while providing plenty of fun and educational apps for children. Indeed, already Kids Mode has gained 1.9 million monthly active users and supports 2,500 child-friendly apps and video content, with more appearing all the time.

Samsung Introduces an Easier Option

With Kids Mode, parents can select and control apps and monitor how their children use mobile devices, making those devices as open or as closed as they wish. Kids Mode controls the apps that a child can use, the videos, music and other content they can access, and how long they can use a device.

But just as importantly as helping parents out, Kids Mode is also fun to use. Its simplified user interface features large and colorful buttons designed for children, with controls that are uncomplicated but that give a wide range of options for children to explore. In addition, there are a variety of exclusive native apps that come preinstalled and that can be downloaded. Plus, Kids Mode and many of its related apps are free, so it’s a solution that every family can afford.

Getting Started

To begin using Kids Mode, parents need to download the app from Galaxy Apps. After installing, they set up a PIN code and a profile for their child, then the app is ready to go.

Parents can then go to the Parental Control area (the button in the lower-left) to customize Kids Mode as they see fit. They can limit the amount of time each day their child can use the device, setting different amounts for weekdays and weekends. Parents also get to control the list of contacts, apps and media their child has access to, ensuring the content is always appropriate for their family.

Kids Mode comes with the Kids Store preinstalled, as well as the Play Zone, a 3D block house with seven themes users can choose. The Play Zone comes with several mini-games that feature the app’s four cartoon characters: Crocro, Cooki, Bobby and Lisa (see box below).

Adding the Exclusive Native Apps

Once the device is configured, parents will need to download apps to get the most out of it. Kids Mode offers a variety of exclusive, native apps, featuring those familiar cartoon characters and the same easy-to-use interface. Among those apps are Kids Camera, Kids Drawing, Kids Music, Kids Magic Voice, Kids Video and Kids Call, offering lots of fun options for playing and developing creativity.

For example, the Kids Camera lets children take a picture of someone, then add funny stickers to the photograph, like googly eyes, mustaches and silly hats. Kids Drawing lets children unleash their artistic side, with a drawing application, coloring book, sandbox and a scratchboard.

Kids Music offers a playful, interactive space for children to play digital instruments along to tunes that a parent has uploaded to the device. And Kids Media lets children watch only the content their parents make available.

All these apps are available both in the Galaxy Apps store and Kids Store. They are free to download, appearing on the Kids Mode home screen. The first time they are downloaded, they appear as a cute gift ready to be unwrapped; tapping the gift opens it up to reveal the regular app icon.

Thousands More Apps and Media to Choose From

Aside from those native apps, Kids Mode is optimized for thousands of partner apps and media content around the world, which can be downloaded from the Kids Store. Samsung has focused on the quality of its apps through partnerships with the most popular content providers from around the world—including Lego and PBS Kids.

The Kids Store groups apps by three different age groups or by category, to make selecting the appropriate apps easier for parents. Just a few taps on the Kids Store download the content, once again appearing on the phone’s home screen as a cute gift. Some apps are educational, some functional and others are just fun, but there are plenty of options in the Kids Store for everyone.

Samsung introduced the tablet designed especially for children in 2013, and since then the company has continued to enhance both usability and content on smart devices for kids. Kids Mode was a major step forward in ensuring mobile devices were optimized for young people.

Now, in 2016, Samsung is showing its continued commitment to children through a newly launched Kids Mode website, which offers more content and services than ever to parents around the world.

* Features and functions of Kid Mode can be vary by device. This article was written using a Galaxy Note5.

The Samsung Smart Play-Board is an experimental new educational device that helps parents and teachers better understand children’s development through play.

This concept product was created by Pietro Rigamonti, a student in the Samsung Maestros Academy Master’s Degree Course at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design). The Samsung Maestros Academy is an online workshop operated by Samsung, designed to build bridges between master artisans and the younger generation, and help develop a new generation of craftspeople in Italy.

The Samsung Play-Board project was developed with a team of scientific endorsers from the University of Macerata and the Product & Solutions team of Samsung Italy. The Department of Humanities at the University of Macerata is currently conducting beta testing in various preschools.

A prototype of the Samsung Play-Board received accolades at the 2015 Milan Design Week and the 2015 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Children

The Samsung Play-Board is an educational play platform designed as a learning guide for both parents and teachers, underpinned by the insights gained from monitoring children’s actions and characteristics… plus it’s also fun to play with!

Insights and analyses derived from children playing with the board help teachers and parents to design a method of learning that is unique and tailored for each child. This is important because children learn to have confidence in their own abilities in their formative years. This makes it absolutely crucial for children to realize their potential at an early age, develop it, and see it nurtured by people they can trust.

How the Samsung Smart Play-Board Works

1. Children can interact and arrange wooden modules while they play.
2. Vibrant colors, differently shaped modules and special “container” modules – where teachers and parents can insert any kind of picture, drawing or flat material – help to stimulate all facets of a child’s intelligence. A virtually endless number of configurations is possible.
3. Interactions with the child are tracked, recorded and logged.
4. This data is relayed to a pre-installed app that visualizes the child’s learning in graphics, which helps to support the educators’ analysis.
5. The app maintains a profile of the child’s development across multiple indicators for intelligence.
6. The app suggests special education programs – called “bridging techniques” – specifically designed to improve detected weaknesses by leveraging on tracked strengths.
7. Parents and teachers optimize education programs based on each child’s individual profile.

What makes the app even more interesting for educators is the fact that the software and hardware are open-source; almost anyone around the world will be able to build a Play-Board from scratch and add new content.

The seemingly endless possibilities of play provide precious information on potential areas of success, and pinpoint areas of weakness. This data is displayed and quantified in a variety of settings. Also, the accumulated data can be used to understand a child’s potential growth and be applied to broader educational use.

The Samsung Smart Play-Board in Action

Shall we try out the board for ourselves? Let’s try the color modules for starters.

First, parents or teachers suggest to the child to plug in the “educational avatar” into the board. Then, they help connect the activity board to the main board.

Now, it’s time for the child to start playing. The child chooses six nature boxes, then fills them with branches, grass or leaves. Next, connect them to the mainboard. Have the child connect the branches and leaves along the grid using the pointer. Children can have fun creating their own patterns.

When the children are done, remove the educational avatar. Data acquired from the play session is sent to a smart application for parents and teachers. It is fast and simple, but also very scientific.

Technology & Design for a Variety of Possibilities

The Samsung Smart Play-Board is a platform that supports teachers and parents, hugely amplifying their capabilities to learn from children’s spontaneous behaviors while avoiding any “prescription” or “judgment”. The pre-installed app gathers data and organizes them into graphs, but doesn’t automate a “judgment”. This is because we believe that this can be done only by a skilled educator who has a broader view of the child and his or her situation. The app is instead intended to sync the tracked data with meaningful tips for better educational activities based on a library developed, updated and reviewed by an international community of educators.

Some people voice concern that technology will stunt the learning capacity of children, by doing all the work and making children passive and dependent. However, like the puzzle games many of us played when we were young, the capacity for problem solving is equally inherent in the Samsung Smart Play-Board, which intends to provide a platform that nurtures possibilities and potential. It all comes down to how technology is used to help us. As the Samsung Smart Play-Board shows, meaningful technology and design open up possibilities for the future of our children.

Olympian Tasha Danvers, a finalist at the 2000 Olympics in the 400-meter hurdles and 4x400m relay and a bronze medalist in the 2008 Olympics in the 400-meter hurdles, cheer on the students with their teammates.

Olympians and Paralympians who train tirelessly to become the best to represent the United States on the international stage took time to celebrate the achievements of Los Angeles students in the first annual Ready, Set, Gold! Field Day.

Ready, Set, Gold! (RSG!) leverages the star power of the Olympians and Paralympians to help Los Angeles students fight diabetes and obesity by teaching them healthy habits.

The mentoring program that began in 2006 now operates in 60 schools with a team of 50 Olympians and Paralympians. Their efforts reach approximately 17,000 students in grades 5, 7 and 9 in the Los Angeles area each year.

“When you grow up, every kid wants to do something great,” said Miranda, a Junior Olympian and a 5th grader at Trinity Elementary School. “You see all these great people here at the school and then you say, ‘I want to be like them. What can I do to be like them?’”

The exuberance of the students, parents and faculty at the year-end celebration was clear as they moved through the 12 activity stations manned by world-class athletes.

“Today, I learned so much and I had so much fun,” said Rogerlio, a student from Trinity Elementary School. “I hope that I could be an Olympian, too.”

The athletes find the experience just as rewarding, not only as a way to continue their athletic careers, but as a way to help the community. RSG! athletes are paired with a school which they adopt, visiting them at least five times during the school year.

“We have a chance to use our identity as Olympians for doing some really good things,” said Olympian Peter Vidmar, “To go into adopt a school, to get to know these kids and to see them flourish as they understand the importance of taking care of themselves.”

Their efforts are paying off in more ways than one. On the annual Fitnessgram test, a comprehensive reporting tool used by states across the country to assess children’s physical fitness, RSG! participants not only perform better than nonparticipants on the physical tests, they also show a higher level of knowledge about nutrition and physical fitness.

The RSG! mentors hope the children will in turn use what they’ve learned to help others.

“It’s about coming in and having a dialogue and carrying on a conversation and having them ask questions, but then also have them understand why it’s important for them to be active and to have fun with it,” said Olympian Giddeon Massie. “Hopefully, they’ll take it away and carry that on in their own communities, homes and friends, and have that become part of their daily routine.”

The BBC unveiled on Tuesday its revolutionary new micro:bit, a small, programmable hardware device that will help young students learn to code, and in the process transform a new generation of passive consumers of technology to creators and innovators in the digital world. A million of these free pocket-sized, code-able computers will be distributed for free.

Samsung Electronics is a key partner in the development of the micro:bit, which is aimed to be a springboard for young children to further learning products. The product is the result of a three-year research and development collaboration between the BBC, Samsung and more than 20 other partners. Samsung’s major role was developing the functionality of the micro:bit to be able to connect to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

The unveiling of this extremely ambitious and unique educational campaign took place at BBC Broadcasting House in London. This collaboration between the national broadcaster and private companies is the first of its kind, a signal of how special this endeavor is. It provides a great example of the public and private sectors coming together to make a significant contribution to education. The devices will be distributed to Year 7 students all over the United Kingdom starting in September, in packaging with the Samsung logo. Samsung engineers who worked on the development of the micro:bit were on hand to provide a demonstration during the event.

Tony Hall, the Director General of the BBC, said, “The BBC micro:bit will inspire a new generation in a defining moment for digital creativity here in the UK. All you need is your curiosity, creativity and imagination – we’ll provide the tools. This has the power to be transformative for the UK. The BBC is one of the few organizations in the world that could convene something on this scale, with such an unprecedented partnership at its core.”

Andy Griffiths, President of Samsung Electronics UK & Ireland, was in attendance and explained the significance of the product. “At Samsung, we’re very excited to bring the micro:bit to life with the BBC. Our engineers are enabling the micro:bit to communicate with everyday digital devices such as phones and tablets to allow young people to code inside and outside of the classroom. It’s a great way to showcase the capabilities of this technology and we’re looking forward to seeing how creative people can get with coding, whether that’s programming their micro:bit to take a ‘selfie’ via their phone camera or coding it to flash when they get an incoming call, the possibilities are limitless,” said Griffiths.

Samsung is building an app to support coding-on-the-go, which will allow children to create fun projects in the classroom, on the bus, at home or anywhere else. The app will be launched on Google Play this fall. Samsung also plans to help introduce the Internet of Things and the future of connected technologies to the classroom by supporting teacher resources and student projects.

To watch a video on what the micro:bit can do, please visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02whktx