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.