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DayCape App Review

App Info

Price: Free

Overview

Some kids need more help getting through the day than others. This may because they have autism or another disorder, or it may simply be that they have a lot of energy and need help staying on track. DayCape is a visual planning app that’s designed to help kids stay on schedule throughout the day. It allows parents, teachers, and even children to fill their days with scheduled activities, and then track the time spent on those activities with fun visual timers. Through the app, kids will feel more organized and more in control of their day.

Features include:

Animated timers
Customizable platform
Individual user accounts
Daily calendars

Quality

To get started with the app, parents or teachers must create an account on the developer’s website. There, there will create individual usernames and passwords and create activities. It’s easy to create an activity – simply enter a title, description, the time the activity should be started. and the time period during which the activity needs to be completed. Images can also be added to activities to make them easier to kids to understand. Activities can also be created within the app, as long as the setting is turned on.

Education

The goal of this app is to help kids who need routines and schedules to get through the day and it generally does a good job of that. While it takes some time to set up all of the activities, once the activities are set up, kids will be able to follow them. Included in the app is a voice synthesizer option, so kids with difficulty reading or who need auditory reinforcement can hear the instructions read aloud. A few downsides to the ability of the app to truly meet kids’ needs in this area is that all times are given using a 24-hour clock, so kids in some areas might not understand that 16:30 is 4:30 p.m. The app also doesn’t appear to offer a way to stop a timer once it has been started, so kids may become frustrated if the app says they’ve completed an activity when they really haven’t. The inability to start activities before the designated time or stop in the middle of them also limits the types of activities for which the app can be used. For example, it won’t work as a checklist of activities kids need to get done at their own pace.

Entertainment

When kids log in to the app, they’ll see a schedule of their activities for the day. They can also add their own activities if parents/teachers opt to allow them to. When it comes time to complete activities, kids get to choose from a selection of animated timers and may enjoy watching the timers slowly move across the screen as they complete each activity.

Value

Despite its limitations, the app offers a lot of value to families looking for a visual planning at. It’s not nearly as complicated as many visual planning apps out there and it can be used by multiple children through the creation of individual user accounts.

Child Friendliness

Once kids log in to their individual accounts, they do have access to the settings screen. This allows them to pick a timer, determine the number of activity days shown, turn on/off the ability to create activities and turn on/off the speech sythesizer. Aside from the opening screen when the app is first opened, there are no external links or other content designed to take kids out of the app.