Lil Explorer

As a kid have you ever wanted to be an explorer, but you've never had the money or time? Now, we have a fun, interactive way to explore different cultures.

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Inspiration

We were inspired to build Lil Explorer in order to create a platform where kids are able to learn and interact with different cultures. With this website, children 10 and younger are able to educate themselves on numerous countries around the world regarding their history, traditions, food, and language. We believe that Lil Explorer has a lot of potential for educating kids on countries and their cultures.

What it does

With Lil Explorer, users can learn more about different countries around the world by interacting with the website. They are able to choose which country they want to visit. From there, they are able to learn about different aspects of the country and play interactive games in order to test out their knowledge of the country. They can also take notes about each country they visit in a journal which is another feature on our website. For each country they master, they are able to earn a stamp on their passport!

How we built it

In order to build the prototype of this project, we used Figma. We used GitHub version control to collaborate on the project, and VSCode as the environment for the proof of concept. Our program is mostly a front-end application, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the more interactive elements.

Challenges we ran into

While creating the prototype, some of the challenges that we encountered were the fact that all our group members were new to Figma. We didn’t understand how to work with it, so it was a struggle for us to work with it.

When we develop the website, we would like an interactive globe which allows kids to use cursors to explore around the globe and click a specific country to learn more about their cultures. As a website developed for young kids for educational purposes, interactive features always bring more fun and can potentially raise more interests.

Finally, we thought it would be best to have images instead of abstract buttons and text so our website is navigable for a younger audience. When it comes to showcasing the various places and foods that can come from a specific region, while it would be easier to place the static images in a row within the website, it is better visually if we were to have the images as a slideshow. This way, the webpage isn’t bogged down with too much distracting information and the slideshow can easily be scaled for more places and recipes without impacting the shape of the page.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to create a prototype that adequately represents the vision for our website when it is fully developed.

Though implementing an interactive feature could be a challenge, we are proud of the result homepage, with the interactive globe and flags of countries at the corresponding place.

Another thing we were proud of was making the custom airplane cursor. While this was a minor detail, we thought it was important for the theme of traveling to different countries. An interesting cursor also adds to the excitement of the webpage. After a hiccup where we found that we needed a specific size for the image, we finally got the cursor of our dreams.

What we learned

While creating Lil Explorer we learned how to make components of Figma more interactive, which gave us a better idea of what our website would look like once it was implemented.

What's next for Lil Explorer

We’re still working on fully developing our website. The next step for Lil Explorer would be to link the prototype to the actual website. We would also need to fill out details for more countries, and make a feedback form available so people of these different cultures are able to input important information.

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