EMOFACE Play & Learn emotions

What is Emoface app?

Emoface's developers have built the app to help kids with autistic spectrum disorders and others with socio-emotional difficulties.

Emoface contains many activities built around expressive 3D animations of well designed faces and encourages children to think about the link between expressions and emotions. While the faces are somewhat cartoon-like, they have a level of realism that allows the player to relate what they see in the app to real-life social encounters.

The following Emoface app review will explain its features and how they help kids on the autistic spectrum.

What we love about Emoface.

Emoface's developers have worked with educational experts to ensure that the whole app considers the needs of its users. The app's presentation is clear, and the interactions are simple and configurable. Those sensitive to overload or overstimulation should not find the app difficult or frustrating to use.

The app does not rely on reading skills as it explains the tasks verbally and feeds back in the same way. Every child who would benefit from the practice that Emoface offers can access it.

There are not many apps available that offer genuinely useful help to kids on the autistic spectrum, so Emoface is a welcome arrival that parents, teachers, and others who work with these kids will truly appreciate.

What skills does it improve?

Emoface app provides games and activities that promote recognising and understanding the facial expressions related to joy, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and disgust.

What age is it appropriate for?

It is better to think of Emoface in regards to each child's needs rather than age. Those who struggle to link facial expressions with emotions can learn and practise with Emoface in a pressure-free context.

Is Emoface easy to use?

Kids will not find it difficult to use the app. They can access whatever section they want in just a few clicks using pictorial and icon-based visual cues. The app provides spoken instructions where necessary, but activities are easy to understand. The kids utilising the app can concentrate on learning about emotions rather than how to use the software.

How will students benefit?

Emoface has both structured and exploratory activities. The activities are simple to understand but offer varied challenges, including asking the player to use their device's camera to emulate an on-screen facial expression.

• The 'Course' section leads players through a structured set of learning activities and rewards success with badges.

• The 'Games' section lets players dip into the different games of their choosing.

• The 'Exploration' section lets children choose a face and adjust its different parts. This facility gives an excellent example of the subtlety of facial expressions. Minor adjustments can produce pronounced changes in the perceived mood of the on-screen character, just as in real-life faces.

How will teachers benefit?

Those teachers who work exclusively with kids on the autistic spectrum might well have built up a range of resources to help their kids, but this won't be the case for all teachers. Emoface is a useful tool for those teachers who are not experienced in helping kids who find recognising emotions difficult.

Emoface's ease of use and reasonable cost put it in the reach of most classrooms.

Its excellent reporting features give a good overview of the user's engagement and progress with the app and help direct teachers to areas where kids need extra support.

How will parents benefit?

Parents of children on the autistic spectrum can find it challenging to help their kids. They can struggle to understand their children's perception of the world and lack the training that teachers and other professionals have.

Emoface gives them a helpful tool with which they can support their kids. If they use the app alongside their kids, parents will learn more about them and be able to refer to what they have learned in other situations.

What can Emoface improve on?

There are a few places where English speakers will notice that the app's translation from its native French is not complete. The two most noticeable are the email confirmation page and at the end of an activity where the legend 'complet' appears instead of 'complete'.

Neither of these instances will give the user much of a problem. Adults will confirm the email address, and it is not difficult to work out which button to click. Fortunately, the other translation omission is so similar between French and English that users should not be confused. These are also the sort of minor issues that subsequent updates are likely to catch and put right.

How much does Emoface cost?

Emoface has a relatively generous thirty-day trial period which compares favourably with most apps that only offer seven days. Trial users have full access to the app and all of its features.

There are two subscription options: monthly and yearly. The latter is better value but less flexible.

Is Emoface safe to use?

Emoface contains no in-app purchases or advertisements. The app's privacy policy makes it clear what personal data it collects and why. While Emoface can use the device's camera for some of its activities, the privacy policy states that photographs are only stored on the device and not uploaded.

Overall rating of the app

For those people who do not have much experience with the difficulties faced by kids on the autistic spectrum, an app such as this can seem overly simplistic. But this is not the case.

Linking facial expressions and emotions can be extremely difficult for such kids. They might also be sensitive to fussy, bright, or complex visual and audio cues in apps. Emoface gets it right. It provides effective help and support to the kids in a package that most will find works for them. Apps that serve kids on the autistic spectrum are rare, so seeing Emoface arrive and fully deserve its five stars is welcome indeed.