Background
My daughter had just started learning to read. Most phonics apps I tried with her were either too gamified or visually overwhelming — busy screens, bright animations, constant reward loops. For a young child still building focus, that level of stimulation gets in the way of the actual learning.
So I built something deliberately simple: low stimulation, one letter at a time, with real audio.
What it does
The app covers the basic English phonetic sounds — each letter of the alphabet, in order. For every sound, a child hears the actual phonetic pronunciation paired with a simple, familiar word they'd find interesting. No animations competing for attention. No points. Just the sound, the letter, and a word that makes it stick.
The most useful feedback came from watching, not asking. A child hesitating on an interaction told me more than any parent survey.
What I took from it
Restraint is a product decision. Removing things — sounds, colours, motion — was harder than adding them, and more valuable. The gap between "the user did the thing" and "the user understood the thing" is usually where the real design problem lives.