Pocketea
Teammates: Stella Park, Yuka Masamura
Rice Designathon 2025
Pocketea–short for “teacher in your pocket”–is a gamified edtech platform that makes social-emotional learning easily accessible for kids aged 4-8. Through a personalized avatar, young children navigate interactive, choice-driven stories where their decisions shape the outcome.
By blending storytelling, gamification, and edtech innovation, Pocketea turns learning into play with collectible badges, star-based rewards, and customizable avatars. With an intuitive, interactive design, Pocketea empowers kids to develop emotional intelligence and navigate social situations with confidence.
01) Research
We began by holding an ideation session on the whiteboard about what we value as humans. Common themes that emerged centered around the social-emotional experiences we learn through face-to-face communication.
To deepen our understanding, we Interviewed with Liam Henson, a child counselor in Boston who works with children ages 6-14. Henson mentioned that in his practice, it is crucial to “guide [the kids] through how to think coherently and practice using words.” He also said using games, such as card and board games, are particularly effective tools for fostering communication skills.
Henson’s insights reinforced our belief that gamifying interactions could provide younger children with meaningful opportunities to develop essential communication and social skills that are so uniquely human and not replicable by AI.
02) Lo-Fi Sketches
On the whiteboard with everyone organizing our thoughts on the page structure.
03). Visual System
We focused on creating assets in cute characters and world building. Given that our primary users are children aged 4-8, we focused on creating a highly visual, text-minimal interface. Rather than overwhelming users with instructions, we incorporated universally recognizable icons, limited on-screen elements to reduce cognitive load, and used interactive animations to sustain engagement.
1) Avatar selection: Onboarding process where the avatar determines the lesson
2) Profile: Shows your avatar and badges you have earned
3) Home: User starts their experience after onboarding process
4) Lesson: Kids go through narrative-based decision-making scenarios & parents can select an avatar that symbolizes each curriculum–for ex choosing “Kind Polar Bear” prioritizes content focused on kindness and empathy, such as the Rainbow Fish.
05) Lesson in Progress: The lessons have an audio feature that guides the kids to make a choice easier and make the lesson more dynamic. The kids are given a choice on an action to take that teaches a lesson about social-emotional cues.
06) Result: After the lesson ends, the kids are awarded with a star and a badge.
06) Thoughts
Although we had a short time frame, we got the result we wanted. By focusing on minimal cognitive load, dual-user experience, auditory accessibility, and gamification, we designed Pocketea to be an intuitive, engaging, and developmentally appropriate tool for teaching social-emotional skills. Our approach ensures that technology enhances human connection rather than replacing it, giving children a fun and accessible way to develop essential life skills early on.
We wish we had more time to flush out more lessons and parental control mechanisms into the app!
