McDonald’s Happy Studio: A virtual playground

The ways children learn and have fun change with the advancements in technology. To today’s children, digital comes as second nature and the amount of time they spend interacting with smart devices keeps increasing. McDonald’s recognized this trend and created Happy Studio – a fun, interactive platform designed especially for its youngest visitors.

About the client

McDonald’s is an American fast-food company and the world’s largest restaurant chain. Besides being known worldwide for their hamburgers and french fries, they are also famous for their Happy Meals – the favorite choice of their youngest visitors. To extend the fun, McDonald’s created Happy Studio – an interactive online playground where children can have fun with their favorite Happy Meal characters.

Happy Studio is the result of successful cooperation between R/GA studio and Preloaded. R/GA is a renowned digital agency that had a challenging job to completely reinvent the old Happy Studio platform. The platform not only needed a new look but also new, primarily educational, content, so R/GA reimagined the whole concept. Preloaded – a full-service games studio – carried out the development and took over the app’s maintenance and content updates.

Engaging imagination with creative face masks

Happy Studio provides plenty of options for entertainment, including creative face masks. Kids and their parents can try out a variety of facial masks, transforming themselves into their favorite characters in seconds.

Face masks are accurately applied to users’ faces with the help of our proven face-tracking technology. FaceTrack tracks 99 facial feature points in real time, so the face masks can be applied instantly and stay on the user’s face even if they move their head.

Happy Studio is available on Android and iOS, so it has to run smoothly on different types of mobile devices and cameras. Since FaceTrack is extremely lightweight, it provides both great performance and the optimal user experience on the broadest range of devices. Moreover, face tracking works even without an Internet connection.

Finally, FaceTrack also comes with a detailed development guide, which makes the integration quick and easy.

Fun for both kids and parents

Happy Studio is an entertaining and completely safe online world for 5-8 year-olds and their parents. The application aims to bring them together and contribute to children’s development through a carefully designed set of games and activities.

Kids can communicate with each other, gain awards and play with McDonald’s character, Happy. Parents can also join in on the fun or use the parent dashboard to access the educational statistics, monitor kids’ game preferences, and more.

Happy Studio is available in more than 110 markets and supports 48 languages. Continuous improvements and updates, including new characters, content and features, make sure its users always have something new to look forward to.