Luqman Explorers.
My role.
Product & UX/UI designer for a right-to-left Arabic web app for children.
- Structure: camps, journeys and daily missions
- The reward system — passport, badges, medals and certificate
- Tone of the task states and copy
- Explorer and guardian account experiences
- UX and UI, right-to-left from the first wireframe
- Audience is children, who have to want to come back
- Arabic, right-to-left throughout
- Content comes from Dalael Centre's Qur'anic stories
- Organisations and schools can run private camps
The brief.
Dalael Centre teaches children's character and Islamic values through Qur'anic stories — patience, honesty, brotherhood — the kind of material that usually lives in a worksheet or a PDF. It gets finished because a parent asked, not because a child wants to open it again tomorrow.
They came to us for a web app. Not a course, not a quiz bank — something a kid would choose to come back to on their own.
The idea.
Instead of designing a curriculum, we designed a trip. Every child signs up as an Explorer — boy or girl, their own little scout avatar — picks a country and an age, and lands on a hand‑drawn world map dotted with camps (معسكرات).
Each camp is built around one story: الفتيان — the Youths of the Cave, a Qur'anic story of faith and friendship — was one of the camps live at launch, alongside a camp on friendship itself. Organizations and schools can also spin up private camps of their own for their own kids.
One camp, four journeys.
Every camp opens onto a short run of journeys (رحلات), and every journey opens onto a handful of daily missions — read a chapter, answer a reflection question, mark it done. The staircase from "camp" down to "today's task" never has more than three steps in it.
A passport, not a progress bar.
Completion is tracked on a passport (جواز السفر) that fills in per journey — a metaphor kids already understand from real travel. Finishing a journey unlocks a badge, finishing a camp unlocks a medal, and the whole camp ends in a certificate they can download and keep.
A camp, not a classroom.
Task states read like a scoutmaster, not a teacher's red pen: "Mission accomplished" sits next to "Not done yet, no worries" — never a hard fail, always a next step back into the story.
The gathering.
الملتقى pulls kids out of solo reading into a shared camp: a live map of where friends are, an evening "samar" session — named after the Arabic tradition of gathering after dark to talk — and a wall to share what they picked up along the way.
Key decisions.
-
Design a trip, not a curriculum
Why The centre's material usually lives in a worksheet a child finishes because a parent asked. A world map of camps gives them somewhere they choose to go back to.
-
Track progress on a passport instead of a progress bar
Why Children already understand a passport from real travel, so the metaphor needed no explaining and the onboarding copy could stay short.
-
Never show a hard fail
Why Task states read like a scoutmaster, not a red pen — “Not done yet, no worries” always leaves a next step back into the story.
-
Give guardians their own account type
Why A parent can follow a child's progress without taking over the child's map — the passport, badges and certificates stay the child's own.
Trade-off Two account types to design, sharing one map without sharing one login.
The ship.
Luqman shipped as part of Dalael Centre's Arabic‑language offering — built right‑to‑left from the first wireframe, not retrofitted afterward. Two public camps ran at launch, with the private‑camp model letting schools and community groups run their own cohorts on the same system.
A separate guardian account type sits alongside the Explorer account, so a parent can watch a child's progress without ever taking over their map — the passport, badges and certificates stay the child's own.
What shipped.
Material that used to live in a worksheet a child finished because a parent asked is now a map they can come back to — and schools and community groups run their own camps on the same system.
What I'd do again.
Borrow a metaphor kids already trust. A passport, a campfire, a badge — none of it needed explaining, which meant the onboarding copy everywhere else could stay short.
Reward the small unit, not just the big one. Daily missions needed their own tiny payoff, or the passport felt too far away to matter on an ordinary Tuesday.
Write for the child, review with the parent. Every task label went through a two‑person read: does an eight‑year‑old find this rewarding, and does a parent recognize the story it's teaching?