Addventures
Overview
how can we make learning math more engaging for kids?
For this 3-day hackathon project, I served as the lead visual designer among a talented team of other designers and software developers. With the challenge of gamifying life, my team decided to make a memorial math learning experience for their children and many others.
This team consisted of 1 researcher, 2 designers, and 4 developers, with my focus being on user research, visual design and usability testing.
Research
why did we go to space?
I took it upon myself to reach out to grade school teachers to gain insight on how they felt about running a classroom of young learners. From this, I learned that teachers often have a difficult time keep their students engaged and ensuring they are on track with the curriculum.
We also had the chance to interview members of my team’s children between the ages of 4 and 6 on their learning habits, behaviors in the classroom and how they felt about math overall.
Additionally, from our researcher’s survey data, we determined that a space theme would capture the attention of our users best.
competitive analysis. gaining inspo for game design.
From a competitive analysis of Prodigy Math, Gogo Math and Duolingo Math we assembled a list of features to consider in order to entice users to keep playing. This consisted of: personalization (avatars), RPG quests, and rewards.
We also took a look at some of the homework assigned to my team members’ children for game ideas.
to infinity and beyond. speed running through the design process
With only 2 days left until the presentation, I went straight into designing mid-fidelity wireframes for usability testing.
In the following wireframes, users will be signing up to create an account on our app where they will provide their username and grade level.
After signing up, users will be free to interact and play games.
After quickly making designs for user testing, we had my members’ children run through the prototype to monitor their actions and emotions. The children has some confusion navigating certain screens like the homepage and navigation menu.
Below you can see more changes we made from user feedback.
Final Product
hi-fidelity prototype. reaching the end of our journey.
In order to build our MVP, we established some of our most important features with all the changes from testing to create the best experience for users.
The final design of Addventures features bright and colorful graphics, a simple and intuitive interface, and a variety of game modes to keep kids engaged. The app includes interactive math games, quizzes, and challenges that reinforce key concepts and build problem-solving skills.
Takeaways
what happened?
We had the chance to let my team members’ kids play around the hi-fidelity designs and they ended up loving it! They were ecstatic about the colors and games and wanted to play more. Unfortunately we didn’t design enough games and features for this to be a full functional app.
Working on Addventures was a challenging and rewarding experience due to the very short timeframe we had to work with. I learned a lot about the importance of time-boxing and balance a lot of work at once.
If I were to do this project again, I would focus more on incorporating feedback from a wider range of users, as well as on creating more detailed user personas to guide our design decisions.
going above and beyond. additional web design.
Before the last day of the hackathon, I designed a quick concept for a web page using the similar elements from the mobile app to give the application a more realistic feel. This allowed me to practice my content design and copywriting skills while creating a visual element that complements the gamified learning experience.
