Toy manufacturer Lego is making its famous line of building blocks mobile with an application geared to helping children learn interactively.

The Lego Duplo Jams app was developed specifically for children?s actions and combines music and learning games. Lego worked with advertising agency Pereira & O?Dell on the app.

?We knew through our research that children had some difficulty when using the iPod touch so our designers minimized the use of swiping and pinching and built the app to accommodate children?s smaller hand sizes with larger icons and functions for easy, more accurate tapping,? said Gary Theut, director of client services at Pereira & O?Dell,  San Francisco.

Tap learning
The Lego app is aimed at children ages 2-5 who are beginning to develop cognitive skills such as touch, which is why the company decided to tap mobile as a learning tool.

To interact with the app, users first choose a song. Users can then pick between five different scenes to play with, including a barnyard, racing track and train car.

Each scene corresponds to a particular cognitive skill.

For example, in the car racing scene children learn about speed and friction to push a race car along a path that includes hills.

More advanced scenes are targeted towards older children with memory games.

Once children complete the task in the scene, they can then move on to the next scenario and receive virtual rewards such as stars.

Children can also win virtual legos that they must stack to create a structure in order to move on to the next level.

Because the app is developed for children, the controls are indicated with one large button in the top right-hand corner of the screen, which cuts down on the amount of accidental tapping.

The app can also go into sleep mode for parents.

Teaching tool
This is not the first mobile initiative from Lego.

Lego has also released other branded mobile apps that help bring its products and games to the mobile space.

Additionally, Lego recently ran a campaign in Singapore with Google?s mobile ad network that generated a 1.3 percent click-through-rate (see story).

The focus on the app being developed for children with large buttons points to the increased use of tablets as learning tools for kids.

Additionally, the sleep mode on the app shows how tablets have become a staple device in households, especially in the bedroom.

In addition to toys, marketers have also been transitioning children?s books into mobile platforms.

As part of Random House?s overall mobile push, the company recently launched a series of iPad apps from the twelve original Little Golden Book stories (see story).

However, marketers need to develop apps with children behaviors and habits in mind in order for them to be effective.

?Our goal is to emerge kids? and parents' playtime while exploring several DUPLO worlds,? Mr. Theut said.

?Since the pattern of playtime indicates that children and adults use apps for frequent, but short durations, the app was designed accordingly with brief activities that teach and reinforce skills,? he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York