National Air and Space Museum

Pilot Pals

The museum turns to Bean Creative to produce its first-ever iPad app.

Kids can learn airplane and rocket basics while playing four adorable games.

Reaching kids everywhere

With a limited budget, the Air and Space Museum wanted to produce not only four games for the web, but also publish the games as an iPad app.

Bean’s job was to figure out the best solution to ‘build once, deploy many places,’ allowing Pilot Pals to work cross-platform, cross-browser, and as a native iPad app.

HTML5 to the rescue

By developing the project using the various technologies collectively known as HTML5, Bean produced a single codebase that worked as the web app and the native iPad app. While these two uses for the codebase could have customizations, we boiled it down to a single toggle during publication.

With loads of custom illustration, kids choose a lovable character to come along on their journey.
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Kids learn about airplanes, rockets, weather, cause-and-effect, sizes, shapes, and patterns.

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The games give kids a chance to experiment, learning in a fun and friendly environment.

Kids everywhere are learning to fly

Promoting an important agenda for both the Smithsonian in general and the Air and Space Museum in particular, Pilot Pals helps kids everywhere experience the fun and excitement of learning about aviation. “This new app helps us advance our strategy of reaching beyond the walls of the museum,” said Maureen Kerr, education chair at the museum. “It allows us to provide fun and meaningful educational experiences for children who are unable to visit and learn with us in person.”

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