Show HN: A different kind of coloring book for kids (Android). Simple and clean.

David, need your help with something. How can I reach you?

Definitely agree with this. My little girl is almost at this stage now and I'm not sure that tablets are the right way to go. This implementation looks really nice but I think that the real world version is sooooo much more expressive.

Not that I'll have much say in it, my wife will veto tablets in favour of actual genuine finger painting in a heartbeat :)

The fat pen is fairly useful in this app since when active it doesn't let you go outside the lines. However, you only seem to get to use it when the shape isn't divided up into sections.

I've used other apps (a branded Crayola one on Nintendo DS springs to mind) where it remembers where you put the stylus down and keeps you within the lines of that section until you lift it from the page. Worked quite well and I think it'd be a good fit for this app.

>>In other words... I'm still not convinced that tablets or phones are very good for "coloring" or "painting" for children.

My personal experience has shown they can be very beneficial. My little sister has Down Syndrome and never did well with regular book coloring. I downloaded an app that used tap-to-fill and what she learned from it has carried over to real life. She learned the lines are the edges for colors, different sections can be different colors, etc. I fully credit the app with teaching her that.

In general they are worse than the actual paper and marker, but when you end up waiting somewhere and you left the kids coloring stuff in the car, apps like this are a life-saver.

That being said, my kids like the free-form doodle apps more than the coloring-book style ones.

My 3 year old has a marker and paper in her hand almost every minute of the day. She is constantly doodling and drawing pictures. I get at least 4 pictures a day from her, all with a story to tell.

When we're out and about, she loves having access to my iPhone when she's been already waiting 20 minutes and losing her patience. She immediately goes for the colouring and drawing apps, and continues doodling. And she knows how to click the home button and the power button to take a picture of the screen.

I don't see these as a replacement, but as a compliment. Don't think 'if I give this to my kid to use, they'll lose all ability to actually use a pencil'. It won't be the case.

congratulations, it looks very good.

re monetising. I assume you plan to bring out more things to colour? If so you could announce them being available when the app is first opened. Assuming that is most likely to be done by the adult it should avoid worrying people. Make anything which could lead to a purchase happening obvious and make the bright coloured attention grabbing button take the user (possibly the child) to the game.

unless there is a safer/better way to go about it. Good luck!

My daughter is 3 and she enjoys the coloring apps on my iPhone. We have a few that I downloaded for free, one was on sale, one has IAP and one is ad-supported.

The ad-supported one shows ads in a separate "pick your color" UI and I'm happy with the design. It's a flood-fill app like yours and while the drawings aren't as good as yours it's functional enough.

The one[1] with IAP is a "color in the lines" style app with a lot of UI: Picking brushes, viewing past drawing and picking a drawing are pretty rich. I ended up springing for the IAP (probably the first time I've ever indulged in it; there's probably a marketing lesson in there somewhere). The app showcased a bunch of locked coloring books that my daughter kept asking me about, so I bought them so she had more to do in the app. One interesting thing was that they partitioned the app's IAP. You could buy one set of markers, or collections of books for a certain amount, or buy the entire IAP library for a marginally higher price. For the record, I found the IAP design to be ok. The price is a little higher than what I'm personally accustomed to, but not unreasonable. What does bother me about this app is that it continues to show me ads for other apps by this developer. Please don't do that.

Hope this feedback helps you decide how to design your IAP.

Let me also add that it's mind boggling how the iTunes UX designers decided that IAP descriptions should be truncated.

[1] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazing-coloring-studio/id507...

Thanks for mentioning that... I didn't know they had changed that.

Thank you! I did thorough research trying to find something like that in the Android Market, and didn't think to look again after the rebranding.

Hope they work on promoting that feature more. This could reduce the number of games whose core gameplay and general UI seems modeled around trying to trick kids into purchasing something.

There's a free app called Famigo Sandbox which will provide your kid with their own launcher with a subset of apps you've approved for their use. As well as in-app purchases, it also prevents making phone calls, sending texts, mucking about with your settings etc. and blocks ads until you unlock with a swipe pattern to get back to the full phone.

It's quite handy. I assume they make money via recommending kid focused apps to their users.

http://www.famigo.com/sandbox/

> I am also getting mixed feedback about buy buttons

Personally, I prefer approach where there is a free version with ads, and a non-free version with no ads and no buy buttons.

Alternatively, some apps simply have the full version ad-free and buy-button-free, and you can optionally buy a "support the developers" version from the store. If the "support-app" is installed, the full version simply adds a "thank you!" on the launch screen.

I don't know how well these approaches do in sales statistics, but I personally go for products like those if given a choice, and I always pay for them if I use them. If nothing else, it's more straightforward and honest.

It is very frustrating to have a fun or useful app which is only provided as a free version and constantly annoys me with buy buttons and ads. I want to just pay - sometimes a lot - for the product instead of watching ads and being nagged to buy Koynz(TM).

It's frustrating because ads don't work well for the users and parents often hate in-app-purchases. Really the best way to monetize a kid's app is to charge for it up-front. But that makes it hard to market. You want to get free downloads to build momentum and fans but then you've got to feed your own family (which users never seem to understand). At least on iOS it's easy to schedule a "free for a day" sale to get attention. Amazon has "Test Drive", their in-browser free trial and NOOK has a separate APK upload for a free trial. (I haven't tried the NOOK free trial yet but I suspect that not many users know about it.)

I absolutely hate anything inside of a kids app that gives my kid the opportunity to buy, install, or even view anything I haven't vetted. Ads are especially bad.

I like the idea of a buy button that makes you prove you're an adult by typing xyz in a box, or some other trivial-for-an-adult task, before it launches the store. IIRC Zoodles' "Kid Mode" has a voice that says "ask an adult to help you with this" any time a kid tries to access a premium feature.

I've already played with that, but it had bad side effect on something (I can't remember what exactly that was). I am going back to that in next updates.

I tested mainly on my 4y old son and then asked few friends to test on their kids. No problems reported. Re HW button - I am thinking about design without it especially because I am going to build iOS version that doesn't have one.

I think because of the zoom feature...at least that's what caught my eye as relatively unique.

I tried dozens of them on Android. They are so busy, terrible UIs, ugly pictures, ads... so that's where I want to fight - with a nice thing. Thanks a lot for tips on apps, I'll check them out.

There is of course short time between taps which if exceeded, then the tap counts is reset. I'll think about another unlock, I'll just collect the feedback and decide. I've got some feedback on overlaying strokes, so I'll think about it for sure. Thanks for the tips!

I did all the graphics, programming, etc. My wife (she is children book illustrator) created the animals set and will create more. Others are licensed from other profesional illustrators from stock sites.

From experience with my son (now 4y old) I think it's about 2 years. But if parent will assist, kids learn quickly :-)

Seriously? He just launched, and there are good reasons to start with Android, especially if you don't already own a Mac.

It's coming ;-)