Animated yeti teaches refugee children and wins MIT Solve Award

Four years ago, siblings Clement and Christie Pang made a pact. 

They decided to build an AI-powered learning companion accessible to children everywhere, even in underserved communities. Christie moved to Silicon Valley, the duo hired a small team of 10 and founded the edtech startup Lirvana Labs, and everyone pitched in to create Yeti Confetti Kids. 

Yeti Confetti Kids is an early education app designed to meet children where they are with a personalized curriculum in English and math. It features an AI-powered learning assistant, a lovable animated character named Yeti, who teaches kids through playful, interactive experiences. 

True to their word, Lirvana Labs priced Yeti Confetti Kids the same as a cup of coffee and made it free for developing countries. But they wanted to do more.

Bringing Yeti into Lebanese refugee camps

So, they partnered with Jusoor, an NGO working with Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. Lirvana Labs equipped refugee families with data SIM cards and devices to ensure stable access to Yeti Confetti Kids. For the refugee children, the learning app became a bright spot in their week. Unlike worksheets, Yeti’s fun, gamified assessments and character-driven design made learning feel like play.

More friend than tutor, Yeti also builds children’s social-emotional skills. They follow Yeti’s instructions, receive encouragement, and build a growth mindset. This connection is invaluable for displaced children facing the daily challenges of refugee life.

The kids couldn’t wait to interact with Yeti in the refugee camps. “They clamor over the app every time they get a chance to play with it,” says Clement. 

This year, after all of their work, the siblings and their team achieved a remarkable milestone: their solution Yeti Confetti for Refugees with Jusoor won the MIT Solve 2024 Global Learning Challenge and GSR Foundation Prize for Innovation and AI. 

“There were 3,000 applicants, and people from Google, Walmart, boards, and nonprofits scrutinized the project because MIT’s name is on the line,” Co-founder Clement explains. The validation — and the chance to expand Yeti Confetti Kids to more refugee camps — means everything to the team.

“MIT Solve chose us because of our novel technology that can globally impact education,” says Clement. When he told us Rive was that novel technology, we had to learn more.

The Rive effect

Lirvana Labs used Rive to create the lively, dynamic animations that make Yeti Confetti so engaging. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without Rive,” explains Clement. “We’d have needed more resources and time.” Using Rive, they crafted everything from animated buttons to fully rigged characters and full-screen interactive animations, all essential to making the app captivating and easy to use.

Rive’s features allowed Yeti Confetti to create complex animations, often requiring no additional coding or input from engineering. Sarah Sung, Lirvana Labs’ senior designer, explains how she created a fun “skip” button in Rive, which would have taken much longer in another platform like Unity. 

“As an animator, it’s hard to jump into Unity and start building things,” she explains. “Engineering has to sit next to you and help you set up everything just to get a few animations in. But in Rive, it was easy to create. Implementing on the engineering side was easy too.”

The Rive features powering Yeti Confetti

Real-time animation and rigging: Lirvana Labs could fully animate Yeti, giving him expressions, movements, and interactions that children could relate to. Character rigging made Yeti dynamic, responsive, and incredibly engaging, with behaviors like giggling, jumping, and cheering for the child.

State Machine and input interactivity: With Rive’s State Machine, the team created adaptive animations that respond instantly to user actions. This feature was crucial for building interactive UI elements, like a stats bar showing progress or skills mastered. It also allowed Yeti’s expressions and movements to change based on the child’s interaction, making the learning process feel natural and supportive. 

Nested artboards and Randomization: For the app’s interactive games, like matching cards, nested artboards allowed for quick switching of assets and randomized placements, creating fresh games each time. “The kids get a different experience with every game,” Sarah shares. “Rive’s randomization and nesting made it easy to implement and scale variations.”

Scalable design for multilingual UI: The team used Rive’s breakpoints and design modes to support various devices and screen sizes, allowing the app to function across devices. For refugee children learning both in Arabic and English, Rive’s flexible layout capabilities allowed Yeti Confetti to integrate dual-language options. 

Community support and rapid iteration: The Rive Community, accessible through Rive’s platform, helped the Lirvana team learn quickly and build efficiently. Sarah found inspiration and practical tips from Community Files, and Lirvana recruited an animator from Rive’s community to help bring Yeti to life.

What’s next for Yeti?

“We’re just getting started!” Clement excitedly told us. “We started in the early childhood education space and want to grow with them. Our next challenge: How do we leverage this ability to design personalized and fun experiences for older children?” 

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