Common Sense Media Review
By Christy Matte
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Kindness tracker lacks polish and tutorial.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 10+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Download
Videos and Photos
Kinditude - Kindness Journal
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's It About?
KINDITUDE - KINDNESS JOURNAL invites users to keep track of each act of kindness they perform and presents an overview of the types of kind acts that have been entered. On the surface, it looks like a calendar. Kids can tap on a day and enter in one or more acts of kindness. They can enter activities that have already been completed or ideas for future acts with reminders. Each journal entry is given a few different tags in the categories of what, when, who (who was affected?), how (thoughts, words, actions), resource (time, effort, money), and impact (none, low, medium, high). Kids may then filter by one of the categories to see the good works they have completed or have moving forward. They can even see statistics about their kindness habits. There are also lists of example acts such as giving a good tip, using a reusable shopping bag, playing with a pet, and getting a good night's sleep.
Is It Any Good?
Teaching kids to be kinder to themselves and others is one of the great tasks of parenthood, but this app might not help much. Kinditude - Kindness Journal has its heart in the right place; building daily acts of kindness into your life is an admirable goal. But it just falls flat. The biggest problem is that it feels unfinished. The entire interface is unpolished, and it negatively impacts the user experience. Kinditude - Kindness Journal opens with no splash page or tutorial. Instead, users land on a calendar page with no month labeled and no way to scroll forward or back. Tapping on a date brings up an event page with a date and all of the category tags. There's a spot to name the kind act, but that also isn't labeled and may not be obvious. Many of the categories are user-editable, including the icon assignments, but there doesn't seem to be a way to change the color of the display. Everything shows up as light purple on a white background. In the settings menu, a theme button seems promising, but it merely toggles you to light purple on a dark background. Even if the interface held more appeal and clarity, you may still be left wondering why you wouldn't just enter your acts into the calendar you already use. Perhaps you're someone who wants to know that you did 30 percent of your kind behaviors on yourself and 70 percent on animals, but otherwise, Kinditude - Kindness Journal doesn't offer any encouragement other than a few inspirational quotes. While there's definitely the chance for this to grow into a tool that enhances your generosity, it's not there just yet.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about doing good deeds. What are some things you can do for others to make the world a better place? What are some things you can do to be kind to yourself? Is an app like Kinditude - Kindness Journal helpful?
Do you think this is a good app for learning? Why, or why not? What can you learn?
App Details
- Devices : iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad
- Pricing structure : Paid
- Release date : December 6, 2017
- Genre : Lifestyle
- Publisher : Akilan Rajendran
- Version : 1.2.4
- Minimum software requirements : iOS 10.3 or later
- Last updated : June 19, 2019
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