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( Case study )
The Spanish-speaking market is full of demand for English education, and full of apps that borrow the same adult formula: streaks, points, and tidy lessons aimed at self-motivated grown-ups. But children don't push through a lesson because it's good for their future. They keep going because it's fun, because a character is waiting for them, because the next mission is too tempting to stop.
Ango set out to build English learning that works on a child's terms. The challenge for Mara: design an experience where the learning is real, but the feeling is pure play — engaging enough to compete with games, trustworthy enough for the parents who hand over the phone.
Children's products live or die on engagement, but they're bought and approved by adults. The opportunity for Ango was to nail both: an app a five-year-old begs to open and a parent feels good about. That meant designing delight and safety as one system — playful, but never chaotic; rewarding, but never manipulative.
Get it right and Ango isn't competing with other learning apps. It's competing with cartoons and games for a child's time — and winning some of it back for English.
Mara designed the full experience for Ango, built from a child's perspective up:
Original Characters — a cast of unique, lovable characters who guide, cheer, and teach, giving kids a reason to return that has a face and a name.
Story-Driven Missions — learning structured as missions and adventures, so progress feels like a journey, not a syllabus.
Gamified Interaction Models — interaction patterns designed for small hands and big imaginations: tap, drag, speak, and play, with every correct answer rewarded in ways kids feel.
A Kid-First Interface — bright, graphic-rich, and text-light, designed to be navigated by children who may not read fluently yet — in any language.
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A character greets the child and leads the way — turning an app screen into a relationship that keeps kids coming back.
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Each lesson is a mission: a short, story-wrapped challenge where practicing English is how you win.
Children are the hardest audience to research and the easiest to lose — they simply leave when bored. We grounded the work in how kids actually engage with screens.
Child engagement patterns — studying what holds a young child's attention in games and shows, and what loses it in seconds.
Age-appropriate UX — defining interaction and reading levels for kids who navigate by image and color before words.
Parent expectations — understanding what makes a guardian trust and approve a children's app, from safety to screen-time feel.
We explored character styles, color worlds, and gamification systems, testing each against the only metric that matters for kids: would they want to come back tomorrow? The direction we landed on is warm, bright, and character-led — a world with personality, where English isn't the subject on screen, it's the language of the adventure.
With insights and iteration from prototyping and testing, we got to thinking how a clear, intuitive solution could
be integrated within the existing ChatGPT ecosystem.
Ango brings English to Spanish-speaking children through a world they actually want to enter. With Mara's design, Ango gained:
Engagement that lasts Characters and missions that give kids a reason to return — the hardest thing for any children's product to earn.
Learning that doesn't feel like it English practice disguised as play, so children build skills while they think they're just having fun.
A brand parents trust A bright, safe, well-crafted experience that earns the adult approval every kids' app depends on.
Original, expressive guides who turn a learning app into a world with friends in it.
Missions, rewards, and interaction models built as a system new content can grow into for years.
In this case, Tomo would use real-time cues to choose when to record, balancing battery with context capture.
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We could use icons to represent moments without visual captures, and pull context from other sources, like LinkedIn headshots for coffee chats.
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We could use a notification to let users know why Tomo is recording.
Mara delivered the full product, character, and gamification design for Ango — an English-learning app built specifically for Spanish-speaking children. By designing from a child's motivation up, with original characters and mission-based play at the core, Ango turns language practice into an experience kids choose over passive screen time.
(If engagement, retention, or download metrics exist, add them here — kids' edtech apps are strongest with a retention or session-length number attached.)
"[Client quote placeholder — ideally from Ango's team on the design or engagement results]"
