Touchscreen apps for child creativity: An evaluation of creativity apps designed for young children

Abstract

In the last decade, touchscreen apps have become a staple for educating and entertaining children. The number of apps that claim to support child creativity has been on the rise. Pedagogical or developmental qualities of these apps in supporting child creativity and learning, however, have not been extensively studied from a research angle. This study takes a systematic approach to reviewing a sample of commercially available apps to determine whether existing apps are well designed to support children's creativity. A sample of 152 Android apps targeting 4- to 12-year-olds which claimed to involve creativity was obtained from 3 sources. The quality of apps was rated using criteria based on research evidence about factors that support creativity (e.g., experimentation, modelling). The apps sampled tended to be for younger children, to be open-ended, for solo use and require in-app interaction, and involved mainly visual arts, and personal and social-emotional activities. Quality ratings for creativity were overall low, particularly in the areas of supports for convergent thinking and modelling creativity. Key app store data (review score, installs, payment and expert approval) were not a consistent predictor of creative app quality. Apps for older children also tended to score more highly. Thus, current apps for children's creativity are low in quality and app store data provides limited indication of their quality. Implications for parents, educators and app designers are considered.