Chinese Characters Factory - Design of children's Chinese character construction enlightenment game based on augmented reality technology
Authors: Xin Cai 
Published: June 2022

China's "13th Five-Year Plan" points out that the development of the industry should adapt to the development trend of multi-media technology. Nowadays, augmented reality and virtual reality technologies have gradually penetrated into our daily life and have had a signiﬁcant impact in many aspects. Since ancient times, there have been many important educational ideas in China. With the development of the Internet, there is a particular focus on the importance of Chinese characters. In recent years, the application of AR design and related research in various ﬁelds of children's education has also developed rapidly, at the same time, the unique interactive, immersive and imaginative characteristics of AR technology have greatly improved the enthusiasm and initiative of learning because they conform to children's ﬁgurative thinking. Therefore, in this environment, it is meaningful to explore how to eﬀectively create a sought after AR children's Chinese character construction enlightenment game.【Methods】: This paper introduces augmented reality technology into the ﬁeld of children's Chinese character education through technical research to create a design method of virtual-real interaction.This paper discovers the characteristics of children's language education, as well as the Chinese character root method through theoretical research, and ﬁnds the ﬁt in children's cognitive development and the character root method. The author attempts to design a suitable set of diagrams to tap into the similarities between word-making thinking and product thinking.This paper ﬁnds the AR teaching format through market research. It weakens the one-way indoctrination process of product knowledge information and gives play to children's subjective initiative. The content is intuitive and can be used to perceive information through visual, tactile and auditory senses in a comprehensive manner.【Result】: “Chinese Characters Factory” is developed based on the Unity 3D, with ARkit as an augmented reality technology solution, run on the IOS platform. Users have access to game experience with iPad. The whole design practice is divided into three systems: Chinese character experiment system, mapping collection system and entertainment interactive system. The Chinese Character Experiment System was inspired by chemical experiments. Chinese characters are formed by the combination of character roots and graphemes with corresponding character formation methods. It identiﬁes the Chinese character card images in the physical environment according to the image tracking technology of ARkit, being able to superpose Chinese character models. In addition, mapping collection system and entertainment interactive system are used to solve children's Chinese character literacy, novel and entertaining growth education.【Conclusion】: Children's educational products with augmented reality technology are important and innovative for the development of children's minds. It is highly interactive and rich in teaching content presentation, so it can mobilize children's all-round perception of information, which greatly stimulates children's learning interest in the learning process and brings a brand-new experience to teaching.Based on the characteristics of Chinese characters, "Chinese character Factory" is a Chinese character AR game that ﬁts the characteristics of language education and the cognitive development of preschool children. It applies the advantages of augmented reality technology to help children learn and memorize Chinese characters in a gamiﬁed way by experimenting with synthetic Chinese characters, bringing children a vivid and interesting Chinese character learning experience. At the same time, "Chinese character test" is ready to be put on the App store.At present, the application of educational products based on augmented reality technology on the market is still in the primary stage. In the future, we still need to explore the application of augmented reality technology in education.