“Be Aware” - an educational app designed to teach children about war and prepare them for air raid emergencies in a way that is both informative and easy to grasp. The main character of the app, a brave bird Ollie, guides a child through interactive story lessons and engaging mini-games, and gives practical steps on how to be safe during emergencies.
Story Behind Project
Two years ago, I realised how fragile safety can be. The news of war outbreak in my country woke me up that day. I remember hearing a loud sound of an air raid alarm. I knew I had to seek shelter, but I had no idea where to hide or what to bring with me.
As an adult, I thought I would handle it better. But I was just as confused and scared as a child would. This made me realise how horrifying it must be for children in war zones. If I felt this lost, how much worse must it be for them?
Drawing from my own experiences, I decided to create “Be Aware”. It’s not just a project for me – it is a calling to make a difference in the lives of children facing terrifying realities of today.
Technologies and features
I developed the entire project using SwiftUI. Additionally, I integrated UIKit for a specific extension of UIScrollView, to enable dragging of objects beyond the bounds of the ScrollView. For playing the air raid alarm sound, I used AVFoundation framework.
All of the assets were drawn by me in SketchBook on iPad and Figma. My aim was to design an app that is as child-friendly as possible, so I chose a cartoonish style for the visuals. I drew inspiration from my favourite cartoons and Pinterest.
App experience consists of 4 chapters: 1. What is war? - Ollie shares his story and explains the complexities of war in a simple and relatable way; 2. Air raid alarm - Ollie discovers what is an air raid alarm and how it sounds 3. Air Raid Rules - Mini game which teaches what to do during an air raid when we are outdoors and indoors, by matching each rule with emojis that represent it 4. Emergency Backpack - Mini game which educates what to have in a personal emergency backpack, by dragging and dropping necessary items into a backpack.