Agile Nomads
Team Members
- brianburridge
- brandclay
- pothoven
- joshhemsley
What
CommendableKids.com allows parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about children, to register a child and begin awarding them badges for their hard work, milestones, skill developments and anything else you believe deserves commending. Then, you can invite family and friends to be a fan of the child, giving them high fives and leaving comments.
Are you kids commendable? If so, sign them up at CommendableKids.com and tell them!
Where
- Entry URL:
- http://commendablekids.com/
How
Gems: headstart, rails-settings, right_aws, paperclip, mini_fb, fake_arel, jammit, will_paginate, formtastic, contacts, sendgrid
Plugins: ar_fixtures, enumerations_mixin, iso-3166-country-select
Rails template: launchpad
Javascript: jQuery, jQuery datepicker
Fonts: Cufon
Services: Google Analytics, Woopra, ZenDesk, Amazon S3
Stock art:
http://thinkdesignblog.com/120-handdrawn-vector-arrows.htm
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=9789537
pictos icons
Comments
Must say this app brings a smile to my face.
Great idea – kids need to be noticed for the good they do.
Great idea – kids need to be noticed for the good they do.
What an awesome cause, awesome design, and lovely UI!!
This is a brilliant idea. Nice job harnessing the achievement system that kids are already picking up on via video games and other sources, and using it to facilitate better things :-)
What an incredible idea.
Excellent
Great concept, well executed. Bravo!
Hope using it with my future kids.
Great site…. I’m going to see if that will convince my 5yr old to wash his hair
Freakin awesome idea. Kids are even more likely than adults to feel rewarded with badge-type rewards. I love this.
Amazing work. Love the product. Love the design. This one earns my only vote.
Awesome! Love the idea and the design! Great work!
Great way to motivate and reward kids…and perhaps inspire their parents too.
Very user friendly! Kids love it!
keep you hard work!!! this app was awesome!!!
I’m using this right now with my two kids, love it!
It’s a nice idea, i find a bit difficult to push on the social side of the site with children, but it’s nice.
Please consider making the awards into Badges to mail to kids homes. They will display them in scrapbooks and collections.
Awesome application! Great idea, and good use of a weekend. Commendable effort :)
Hmm, I am in shock that this app is ranked so low. I don’t know how globally useful this type of audience would find it but with such an amazing design how is this not at least top 3? Very strange.
Regardless, congrats on the great idea and execution. I would imagine once this gets released in full you will have a great response from an education/parenting based audience. Just not a Rails Rumble audience, which I assume you probably expected.
Bravo!
Cool. Nice to see something for someone else besides techies
Awesome, love the design especially!
I love this site..great job!
Great job!
Thanks so much everyone for the amazing feedback. We are enjoying hearing everyone’s opinions. If anybody us interested I’ve posted a blog post with a look into the design process: http://bit.ly/crVPJP
Thanks again!!
Well done.. still nededds some stuff to be a full fledged app.. (basic things, like ability to print out the awards) but the concept is great, and it is well executed and nearly complete.
Great work!
Great Design – even more awesome concept!
Very useful and attractive site! Nice.
Amazing work guys! Just stunning!
Awesome job!
This site really is beautiful. The colors, the subtle textures, the intuitive UI and most importantly, the subject matter. Nice work guys!
Looks great, works pretty well and I love the idea.
Only problem I see is that you can add a future child (i.e. one who isn’t yet born) and then award them with badges before they are born. I would say this is a bug, but I guess it could be by design.
Had some slight rouble logging into Facebook and had to try a second time.
Good luck guys, awesome job!
This is a wonderful tool for our youth.
Awesome!
Love it! Great for helping separated and working away parents to keep on the same page and up to date with their children’s upbringing and behavior.
Really like the concept. The UI is super-clean and seems easy to use.
Great for out of town grandparents!!!
A very interesting concept! Nice layout—easy to follow. This is a new concept, so being able to understand what the service/product is about is critical. The site layout and text makes it easy to quickly understand what the site is about.
Already signed up – given my kiddos badges :)
An excellent website best characterized by the words "clarity, economy, and grace.” The content is positive, elevating, and refreshing, with a strong emphasis on the parent-child relationship—a marvelous change for those striving to raise small children in the midst of the “Cybernetic Revolution” of our day. Indeed, the emphasis on developing the parent-child relationship—in a world of “nothing buttery” (i.e., humans are “nothing but” animals, machines, capital, tools, etc.)—offers encouragement and hope to those in need of as much (consider the single parent in public housing, not simply the “default thought” of the family unit, which is too often [exclusively?] characterized by upper middle class, nuclear family unit living in the suburbs of a city). Moreover, the obvious LACK of ambiguity (and “information overload”) is a subtle but forceful statement of careful planning and professional execution. The website is neat, clean, and attractive in appearance, with superior taste in color and font selection, object placement, and text format. In harmony with all the aforementioned, the objective of the site is thoughtful and clearly unbiased, with no hidden polemic and/or social-political-religious agenda. The delicate balance between a global, diverse appeal, and, a persuasive intention as specific as a zip code, is another stellar characteristic of this site (available to those who take care to observe as much!). Even the most casual observer will find the various tabs and links of this website easy to identify and navigate . . . something for everyone! “Hats off” to all those involved in the creation, design, and production of this website . . . a job well done, indeed!
Beautiful website and an excellent concept.
Great idea
I dont like parents who brag about their kids.
Great job. Kids and parents will love this!
This is a top notch web app, and something you’d imagine would take months to complete.
great looking site!
Such an awesome looking site, would love to use it once I have kids!
Incredibly beautiful front end design, and an overall great idea.
Only parents know exactly how great this is. It’s a marvelous idea to motivate kids. It also has a huge potential to market. For me it’s the winner.
5 stars justified: reat concept, amazing looks, fully completed, and quite useful for encouraging kids.
love it! Nice work guys
@lee.hambley Thanks for looking over the site. Keep in mind that this site is to reward the child and share their accomplishments with friends and family. The child themselves doesn’t spend time on the site nor do anything on the site. This is for caring parents who love to tell their children they did a great job on something and love to tell remote friends, grandparents, aunts and uncles what the child did as well. My kids, age 8 and 12, love it when they get an email saying they were awarded a badge which they earned working hard at school, in the yard, and around the home. Their grandparents also love that they’ll be automatically notified now when their child learns a skill, reaches a milestone, or accomplishes something commendable.
Great Idea
@zapnap If you sign up and award a badge to a child, it already shows the option of having a certificate, postcard, or button mailed to the child with the badge on it. That was part of the original plan. Thanks for the compliment.
Interesting app, but the young child on the cover is more likely to get reward out of wpending some time with his parents than an online award badge… this could have been interesting for older kids, young teens and a little before – old enough that they’re using the internet anyway.
I think (and I doubt I’m alone) that kids as young as the one on your homepage should not be relying on the internet for their social development, not even for augmented development… fort that I have to assume you pitch this at bad parents who don’t care for their kids… and could be fixed with `older` badges, and sample kid!
The theme of this site just rocks. As a parent, I know how important encouraging my kids is. I will definitely be using CommendableKids with my 3yr old.
This site definitely takes the cake for design. I love the colors. So different than your typical “Apple” wannabe styles. I really love this!
What a great job guys! Your concept is truly unique and the execution is slicker than a BP oil spill. Awesome work!
great idea; great website.
Overall – this is fantastic!
One word of warning: I have worked with KooDooZ.com and know that there are some serious legal requirements when working with kids. On the add a child page, the email address and freeform image upload are a cause for concern. Make sure you consult (or become) an expert!
First, I have to say… beautiful design on this. It’s pixel perfect. Not a thing out of place. Small touches like the badge illustrations matter a lot.
Also, I love Sachin’s idea about partnering / sending out real physical boyscout/girlscout-style badges to kids that use this. With an element like that in the mix, I feel like you’d be on to something big here. Without it, I wonder if the “virtual badge” concept is appealing enough to your average kid to motivate them.
But then again, I doubted Foursquare mayor status would motivate adults and it seems like I was dead wrong about that :).
It looks great. It’s crazy that it was done in 48 hours. The layout design is very easy to follow and doesn’t give any hesitation of what to do or where to go. The color palette is very refreshing and calming. Great stock art with the little boy. It really grabs your attention and gives you an idea of what the site is about. Great concept idea for all the many parents out there that love the reward system to teach and to give positive reinforcement.
Looks great!! You guys did a great job!! I love the color palette and easy to use layout.
I don’t have kids, but this is a great app.
Love this idea!
Beautiful!
This is a really great concept! I have already signed up and started awarding badges. I plan to share this with my family and I see some purchases in my future.
This site was designed by kids who are obviously commendable themselves. It’s an ideal way to motivate and encourage kids to develop important skills, interests, and talents.
i can see using this with my kid!
Great site! Nice technical use of ROR!
Loved It! Signed both my kids up!
As a kid, I can say that this site is cool for me. It’s fun to earn badges and share that with my family and friends.
I really like the app great job dude, pretty awesome.
Very useful! Greal idea for parents to encourage their kids.
Awesome job
I’d use this with my kids especially on an iPad or other mobile device.
Great looking site!
You guys nailed this – off the freaking charts – Sean and Josh, you guys are geniuses!
This wasn’t assigned to me, so I can’t give you star ratings. Excellent idea and design. Absolutely a big fan of trying to tie game mechanics to the real world – and to do it with kids to get them to learn/study/exercise/whatever is genius. If you actually have a hookup to send out physical badges, then I bow down. I’m pretty sure you could monetize this with partner offers and advertising instead of the annual fee; it would certainly increase your market penetration (and I’d feel better about letting lower income families have the same access as upper income folks).
I like this! definitely something you can expand on – good work guys
Thanks for the great review Michael.
I had relationships in the plan for both the registering adult and the fans, but we just ran out of time. As you can see there was a lot to do, and we had to drop off a few items, including relationships and editing and removing of an awarded badge.
If you go to the Overview page you will see Privacy Settings for each child. That allows you to make their awards private to only those you approve as fans just like you asked for.
The answer to your last question is…we are a bunch of superheroes. ;) We did talk on the phone a couple of times and I made functional sketches to show what each page did and shared that with the team, though they complained they couldn’t read my handwriting at all so I had to explain it to them vocally anyway. :)
I have no problems publicly embarrassing myself so here are the links to the sketches I provided:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/commendablekids.com.prod/sketches/awarding_pages.pdf
http://s3.amazonaws.com/commendablekids.com.prod/sketches/account_and_feature_pages.pdf
http://s3.amazonaws.com/commendablekids.com.prod/sketches/home_page_and_not_logged_in.pdf
Other than that, what you see is us busting our butts and using our vast Rails and design experience. We only had two Rails developers because we needed two designers to have someone focus on the badges and another on the site design.
We can’t wait to get back into the code and make it even better. Thanks again for the words of encouragement and advice.
Review: commendablekids
APPEARANCE
Absolutely stunning!!!
COMPLETENESS:
I found nothing broken… really wonderful ways of showing the future of the app with “physical badges coming soon”.. great that you are showing future monetization with a fantastic price of $8.99/yr / child. AMAZING WORK GUYS!!!
Possible Suggestions (take em or leave em :) :
INNOVATION & USEFULNESS:
This is a fantastic idea!!! Really really innovative and totally useful!
OVERALL:
This is really hard to believe that it was done in 48 hrs. There must have been at least some BA work… and drawings previous… either that or you have a team of superheros working together with a really great balance of talent! Great work guys and the best of luck to you! Definitely the best app I have seen so far!
I did a doubletake to make sure this was a rumble site. It looks like a professional company. Gorgeous site.
Implementation is great. I like that you’re thinking about monetization right now. Next would be to offer hard goods as well as the virtual. I think http://www.giftcards.com/ offers a partner program (looked into them a while back). I’m sure there’s a myriad of other partner programs you can link up with.
This is a great niche market you’re after. I know a lot of startups are targeting being embedded into school systems and simplifying the parent <→ teacher <→ student relationship. This seems a logical partnership for them and a great way to earn some extra cash for the school.
I could see this getting very fun and competitive quickly. Kudos to the team!
Beautifully built website. The layout and flow through the site is very well done. You can tell within a few moments of using the site, that this is a professional organization. I would be very curious to see who would pay for this service and also how many parents/teachers would actively manage it.
Looking great guys!