Kark is refreshing trading cards for the future, and they educate kids too

I remember the time, over a decade ago, when Magic: The Gathering trading cards were the rage. Boys would play them below apartment blocks and on hidden corners of shopping malls.

They’re so addictive that my school would punish any student caught playing them while in school uniform. Newspapers sensationalized about the evils of these collectible cards, much like they do now with World of Warcraft.

While I think much of this negative hype towards games are overblown,  Kark, one of twelve incubatees at Singapore’s JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp, is taking the message seriously and has embarked on a mission to make games less harmful to kids. They’re achieving this by making educational trading cards that interact with smartphones through companion mobile apps.

“Children love games, but they don’t benefit. Only developers do,” says CEO and serial entrepreneur Sindhu Prabowo Dilaksono, who heads a team of four Indonesian co-founders.

“Doing educational apps is one way of making money without feeling guilty.”

Describing the product in words doesn’t do it justice, but I’ll try (I requested for a video, but it wasn’t ready). The theme of their prototype is the weather, and the cards that come with the app has depictions of the sun, clouds, moon, or wind.

After you open up the app, a 2D landscape pops up. Whenever you wave one of the cards in front of the phone (say, the sun card, which has a QR code on it), the sun emerges in the landscape. Flash the cloud card, and a cloud appears.

What impressed me during the demo was the app’s interactivity. As you flash the card repeatedly, more clouds appear. You can move the clouds around with your fingers, or combine it with other clouds. When it gets too big, it starts to rain. Wave the wind card and these objects will be blown away.

It’s an easy way to teach kids aged five and above concepts like precipitation, or the fact that there’s only one sun (flash the sun card repeatedly does nothing, unlike the cloud card) for us in our solar system.

The team, which consists of CMO Daniel Simon, CCO Fithor Faris, and CTO Bullit Sesariza, has already begun testing their product with kids. The response has been positive so far.

“We thought they’ll be bored after 15 minutes. The session ended up lasting an hour,” says Sundhu.