Avatar & World

About

The Avatar is a feature that allows Students to purchase items with credits and customise a character. 

The World is where Students' avatars visit and complete Maths Activities to earn credits.

Creative Fields: Tablet, Web

Created: June 2016

The Process

• Champion UX value to the business

• Research on HCI and Child Psychology

• Interviews, Participatory Design, Discussion Focus groups and Desirability Study with Users

• Collation and analysis of findings

• Information Architecture

• Presentation through Storytelling

• Brainstorm and Sketch Boarding ― ideation

Goals

To steer the Stakeholders toward a user-driven development process; to improve and revamp the current Avatar & World Feature in order to drive students' learning and engagement experience.

Results

Company's increased knowledge in UX; framed vision and facilitated rapid prototyping with a cross functional team of Interaction Designer, Graphics Designer, Programmer and Product Owner.

Discussion

I invited an appointed stakeholder from each discipline of the business namely, Development; Marketing; Graphics and Interaction Design; Content Writers. 

This was to ensure input from each key function was gathered from the start of the project; to have clear shared goals; and to gather best ideas.

Problem & Solution

A couple of the stakeholders didn't turn up for the meeting.

I had to take initiative to chat with him or her separately, be direct and respectful, and let the person knew we needed his or her input to ensure the success of the feature. 

What I learned about Facilitative Leadership

Because UX was new to the corporation, it was important to assist team leaders in understanding UX and help them "connect the dots". 

Facilitative Leadership helps foster involvement of team members; encourage behaviours that seek to adapt, solve problems, collaborate and cooperate.

Unpacking Thoughts

Each stakeholder wrote down his/her thought on a post-it and we grouped them.

Key points:-

• Objectives and possible pitfalls 

• What do we NOT want to do?

• What do we want to do?

• What drives a good design?

• Do we share one system for all educational products in our company?

• How to recruit participants efficiently?

What I achieved

Stakeholders were able to voice their concerns and have a healthy debate, and eventually came to a consensus. 

The diversity of people with varied backgrounds and viewpoints meant I was able to gather breakthrough vision and insights. 

Children's needs, frustrations and motivations

Working in pairs for an interview is preferred so I could maintain eye contact with the participants and my colleague could jot down notes.

Audio or video recording is vital for references at a later stage to either track information a note taker might have missed or to show to stakeholders for buy-ins. 

Observing how children interact with the games they love

This allowed me to study:-

• Most intuitive gestures on the iPad

• Impact of Interactive Design - Greetings by character; Instructions; Time-Outs (Suggestion of what to do next); Wrong Answers; Correct Answers; Feedback that encourages or react to kids' input; Help

Testing the Character Designer's concepts for different ages groups

Students were asked what they thought of the different ages of avatars shown to them. Each child was asked to picked out the avatar that they thought represented themselves; for their own age group.

Summary of findings

I consolidated what the children said and presented the summary to the Product Owner and Character Designer. 

Favourite Characters

Teenagers were asked to vote for the characters that they like (from the games they play) and talked about the reasons. They spoke about the abilities as well as visual design of the characters. Abilities were more important in the sustenance of their interest.

Description of the existing Avatar Feature

They were asked to describe the current Avatar feature in our product and state the "Whys". This helped us get to know their perception of our product, and reveal existing problems.

From Findings to Ideation

When adequate amount of research has been done, it was time to convert findings into ideation. I charted a scroll of the UX Research, Context, IA, Guidelines and Inspiration images. 

What I did

I facilitated a session of Sketch-boarding and Dot Voting with two small groups of Interaction Designer, Graphics Designer, Programmer and Product Owner.

This was to brainstorm on the UI design of the Avatar System on an iPad.

What the Stakeholders did

1. Each group spent 15 minutes going through the research on the scroll

2. With the given iPad template, sketched out three key screens for the Avatar iPad app that Primary Students would use

3. Presentation of each group's sketches

4. Both groups voted for what they liked (green dots) and disliked (red dots). Discuss why.

Emotional Tone

I had learned at a later stage as a UX professional that it is important to set the emotional tone at the start of an UX session with Stakeholders or Users. The use of ice-breaker, preferably one that simulates the UX activity could easily achieve this goal. Playing soft upbeat music in the room also helps.

The result of a good vibe in the room is to encourage heads up rather than heads down thinking; get people into a playful mode, allow them to be silly, think out of the box, and churn a range of ideas ― whether outrageous or simple it doesn't matter because a creative process encourages innovation.

Use a Timer

Time each activity of a session. Use a stopwatch app that rings to alert Stakeholders that they're near the end of an activity. 

What would this achieve?

• Well-timed activities and thus finishes the session on time; it's generally not a good idea to run overtime because people do get tired, it's always better to have people leave on a high note

• The UX professional would not feel hesitant to "interrupt" through the use of a ringer 

Provide Snacks and Water

This may sound like a very simple idea but from my experiences had proven to be an important one. When Stakeholders or Users get tired, jittery or impatient, snacks or a sip of water help them settle down and relax.

Less Interruptions from the UX Facilitator

One of the feedbacks I received was that I interrupted too often. 

At the start of each activity, I should state that I would be there if they have any questions. It is ok to survey but do so quietly and observe. Interrupt only if the Stakeholders or Users have steered completely off course. 

Less interruptions means Stakeholders could stay focus, get creative and collaborate effectively.