Nayi Disha Studios that is co-founded by Kartik Aneja, Kushal Bhagia, and Kunal Chawla, who are graduates from BITS- Pilani and Stanford, builds educational movement based computer games for preschool children to make learning fun and more engaging, using motion-sensing technology
Games by this studio are currently being used in 35 schools in 12 cities across India. And have also created game that is available for the home platform internationally. More than 15,000 children around the globe are playing their games.
“Our games are fundamentally based on Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences.
Young kids have different learning styles – some learn by looking, some by listening, and many others by moving. Our motion based technology helps children learn through their respective learning styles.” shares Kartik with AnimationXpress.com
The studio’s games revolve around baby alien animated character Kaju that his world, surrounded by his family and people he comes across. And presently they are working on an animated short based on Kaju
“We’ve built 20 educational games set in this world – and each game starts with a visually stunning cinematic.” adds Kartik and we choose to get into a much detailed conversation with him on the journey of Nayi Disha, Making of Kaju, Upcoming Short and what the future holds for the studio.
Hi Kartik, it is a pleasure to converse with you, before moving onto the works by your studio, tell us about yourself and your team?
Thanks!! I’ve worked extensively on Human Computer Interaction at Hewlett-Packard Labs, Bangalore where I developed a spatially independent gesture and speech based multi-display interaction system using multiple Kinects. I came up with the idea behind Nayi Disha while working at HP. I built and piloted two games in an orphanage in Bangalore.
The project was a roaring success and won several accolades and got attention worldwide, being featured on the Microsoft Software Developer Network blog and the Time of India. Inspired by the response, I decided to pursue his passion of integrating natural interfaces into the education system in India.
Kushal leads business development and finance at Nayi Disha. He has extensive experience in business development, market research and finance. Prior to co-founding Nayi Disha, Kushal worked as a Market Analyst at Development Consultants Pvt. Ltd., India’s leading power sector consultancy, identifying new opportunities for the company in the solar energy sector. As an undergraduate he co-founded Socialite – a Social Media Consultancy that helped brands manage their online presence with me. At Socialite he brought on board several clients including the Government of Holland.
During college he led a team of 60 students while raising funds worth more than $150,000 for the student organized college festivals. The team managed successful tie-ups with international brands such as Dell, Reebok, Mahindra, Aircel, Knorr, Pepsi etc.
Apart from the co-founders we have an extremely talented animation team comprising of Prateek Pandey, Mohammed Rizwan and Aditya Dogra – each of them being a Generalist. They are mostly self-trained animation ninjas handling varied modules of animation. Nitish Sinha, also a BITSian, takes care of the Game Development.
Tell us in detail about Nayi Disha Studios?
Nayi Disha Studios builds educational movement based computer games for preschool children to make learning fun and more engaging, using motion-sensing technology. Since there is movement involved, kids are no longer sedentary and teachers find them more involved and focused. Our product is installed at several prestigious schools and pre- schools in Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Delhi NCR, and many more cities throughout India.
What is the latest happening at your studio?
Our latest project is a 90 second cinematic, where Kaju comes across a really old secret room in his house. Over there, he comes across a pair of magical drums. The story then culminates into another educational experience for the children.
Why did you feel the need of developing games to impart education to preschool children?
Preschool children are usually bubbling with energy, and have a natural need to physically move. The traditional chalk-and-talk method of teaching often curbs these natural tendencies, and slows down their growth. There is enough research to prove that different children have different learning styles – some learn by looking, some by listening, and some by moving and so on. Our work gives each child the opportunity to explore his/her own style of learning.
Moreover, they get an opportunity to develop their Gross Motor Skills. Finally, gamification of the entire process just makes sure they have fun – and isn’t that what learning should be all about?
Take us through the journey of creating Kaju?
Games around Kaju are slightly different from the main-stream genres, in the sense that they emphasize on repetition. Each game is a one-level single player game, but there are multiple related activities that go around them in the classroom. The first 20 games were released on Microsoft Windows. The home-app (Skywriting Alphabets) was released on the Leap App Store for both Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX.
There is no keyboard or mouse – the children use their bodies to control the game play. They can jump, clap, run, hop, fly, squat, bend, turn, and do much more to drive the games forward.
How is the look and feel like and does it take inspiration from any movie?
We are heavily inspired by Pixar’s work – its simplicity, and yet… its ability to touch our hearts. However, it’s important for us to not get lost in our inspirations, and pay attention to our reality – our audience here in India.
What we take back from Pixar is a sense of finesse that we try and weave into a futuristic but very child-like world. Kaju moves from sci-fi spaceships to his beautiful dreamy room floating in space, to an ancient attic that he accidentally stumbles upon. It’s really important for us to expose children to a multitude of environments, and keep a sense of familiarity at the same time – and that is exactly what we strive to do at Nayi Disha.
Did you go through any references or did any specific research for creating any aspects of the game?
Since we do educational computer games, our research started with attending school again. My co-founder, Kushal, and I spent days in Kindergarten playing with children, understanding their tastes, abilities and so on. We would even come and go in the same school bus – the idea was to observe them for as long as possible.
The next step was to create our first character. This involved exploring everything from Disney to Anime to European Animation. Space seemed to be a popular theme with the children, so we went with that.
Finally, once we had Kaju, we went through a diverse range of space movies as well as children movies, understanding how the content is structured.
One interesting discovery that we made while creating Kaju is how most famous cartoon characters have names with not more than two syllables – mick-ee; min-ee; don-ald; wall-ee; woo-dee; go-koo – the list goes on and on. With that in mind, and our love for Goa made us call our cute baby alien Kaju – something that has struck a chord with children.
How do you test the game and how did you set the difficulty?
We aggressively test our games at partner schools, and collect real-time feedback during these sessions. The games are then iterated upon. Similarly, we keep collecting feedback from all our client schools, and the games keep adapting accordingly.
“Nayi Disha Studios aims to make learning more fun and enjoyable for children of all ages. We hope to leverage the latest in ICT to help children learn and grow in the most engaging manner.” concludes, Kartik