gobots - Frankly Nonsense

GOBOTS:
NURTURING CHILD HOOD DEVELOPMENT
cas e s tudy #2
1 8 - 1 1 - 201 5




07954356705
[email protected]
www.franklynonsense.com
uk.linkedin.com/in/alexgreaves
THE VIS IO N
Enable children and parents alike to plan activities
and nurture development through play.
The amount of time that children are spending on mobile devices
is increasing year on year. GoBots was created to help influence
children’s behaviour through incentivising real world play and personal
development by utilising their access to devices.
The concept for GoBots emerged from personal insight that the two
founding stakeholders had gained through their own children, how they
spend their time, when with and without their parents’ company. It was
felt that parents’ and their children would benefit from help planning
activities and keeping themselves engaged in their progression. To
validate their hypothesis the conversation was opened up to a network
of parents.
02 GOBOTS
MY I NVOLVEMENT
I was tasked with establishing the
strategy, user experience and all
interface design elements. This
included design, illustration and
animation blueprints that would
be used to brief in other designers
and illustrators and also inform
development of the application
further downstream.
Since joining the agency I had
become heavily involved in all
research and development projects
and I was asked to see this project
t h ro ug h f ro m a n ow n e rs h i p
perspective. I reported directly
to the stakeholders and involved
other colleagues throughout.
The project was handed over at the
end of my time at Suburb and has
since been developed and launched
in the app store as an MVP. My
upfront involvement outlines
future features for the service from
business and user perspectives.
Tasks include :
• Affinity Diagramming • Animation Planning • Brainstorming
• Card sorting • Character Illustration • Competitor Analysis
• Content • Guerilla testing • Heuristic analysis • Protoyping • Iconography
• Journeys • Paper prototyping • Personas • Presenting • Research
• Scenarios • Stakeholder Interviews • Storyboards • User Flows • UI Design
GOBOTS 03
ENGAGI NG OUR AUDIENCE
Third party research was undertaken on behavioural psychology in
children and on games systems that could inspire a positive change in
a child’s behaviour to benefit their learning. This research directed the
decision to take a deeper look into virtual pets and the effects that a
learning companion can have on a childs learning journey.
“Children relate easily to pets and create strong affective bonds.
(…) Based on artificial intelligence the pet can respond differently
dependant on the level of nurturing or lack of care given by the child. (…)
This is proven to result in a teaching stimulant to children.”
- Virtual Pets: Interaction, Uses, Technology, Catrinel Maria Danauta
In order to keep children engaged we looked at various game systems that
could act as enablers for more long term, nurturing relationships between
users and their virtual pets. In particular we chose to focus on using
reward systems to form a learning scaffold and utilise a tiered levelling
system, this would increase difficulty as the child and pet progressed. All
of this would be based around their identity as a learner.
Some thought was also established for monetising the service through tie
ins with cultural hot spots and institutions. Allowing these venues to have
a conversation with their visitors and rewarding the children for their
enhanced engagement. Brand sponsored activities and challenges were
also considered.
04 GOBOTS
GOBOTS 05
T HE EXP E R IE NCE
BALL
GAMES
SOLO
KEEPY
UPPYS
CYCLING
SMALL
GROUP
WA L LY
WAT E R
TEAM
SKILLS
DO … KEEPY
UPPYS
DO … KEEPY
UPPYS WITH
TWO FEET
C R E AT E
GOBOT
We also considered best device for
the minimal viable product based
on publicly available data. It was
felt that Apple products were best
suited to the demographic and a
decision was taken to develop the
BRAINS
READING &
WRITING
DRAW A …
DOWNLOAD
FROM APP
STORE
ONBOARD
COUNT TO
YOUR AGE
PLACE
READ YOUR
FULL BOOK
M AT H S
READ THIS
…
n
e
Frustration
YOUR BOOK
TA K E A
PHOTO OF
YOUR
FAVOURITE
High
READ …
PAGES OF
o
Challenge
Level Axis
Z
Our user’s possibly restricted
access meant that engagement
methods needed to be especially
considered so that parents wouldn’t
be bombarded with notifications
outside of a child’s device time.
AT H L E T I C S
TELL ME
w
- Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes
Report, Ofcom, October 2014
A mission system was designed
around a levelling tree and flow
theory to keep the user engaged.
This would evolve based on the
type of activities that the child
enjoyed. This was supported by a
rewards platform which would gift
the child with new accessories for
their Gobot or give them access to
new missions and activities.
ACTIVE
lo
“Children’s access to a tablet
computer at home has increased
from 51% to 71% for 5-15s since
2013.”
MVP around the iPhone due to the
nature of the type of application.
It was important that this service
was a non-disruptive extension to
their lives and didn’t keep them ondevice.
F
The experience needed to be
respectful of a number of use cases
representing how children would
interact with the service and that
would also respect their access to
devices. This access would depend
a lot on the age of the child and
whether they would use their own
device or a parents.
GAMES
Boredom
WRITE
YOUR NAME
WRITE
WRITE
ABOUT
YO U R D AY
ABOUT
YOUR WEEK
ABOUT
YOUR
FAVOURITE
ANIMAL
High
Low
Skills/Ability
Level Axis
COOKERY
WRITE
ABOUT
YOUR
FA M I LY
CRAFTS
WRITE A
SHORT
STORY
WRITE A
POEM
WRITE
ABOUT
YOUR
FRIENDS
06 GOBOTS
GOBOTS 07
JOURNEYS
From research with children
using initial paper prototypes as
a conversation point it was found
that a heavy interface would be
detrimental to achieving our vision.
We decided to bring our virtual pet
to the forefront of the experience
and hang all complexities from
him/her using a combination
of natural language and simple
navigation. All routes would begin
and end with an interaction with
the virtual pet.
A number of journeys for each of
the key features were sketched
and validated using the target
audience and stakeholders. By
utilising a very lo-fi method we
were able to very quickly iterate on
ideas and flows. This enabled us to
very quickly make changes to the
journeys in line with the feedback
received.
The features considered at this
stage didn’t all make it to the MVP
due to time and budget constraints.
These included: GeoLocation
activities, sponsored activities,
accessory trading, custom created
a c t iv i t i e s a n d u s e r c r e a te d
accessories. These features have
been added to a backlog for the
second release.
GOBOTS 09
P ROTOTY PING FO R CHILDR E N
Numerous paper and higher
fidelity prototypes were created
for user testing. It was quickly
found that children struggled
to comprehend traditional low
fidelity wireframe prototypes so I
made the decision to hand sketch
the interface in order to make the
prototype more playful for our
audience.
O n c e we h a d e s ta b l i s h e d a
playful prototyping experience
it became apparent that children
especially enjoyed customising
their character. Because of this
insight I created a fully interactive
customisable character in the
10 GOBOTS
prototype which was a huge
success with our test groups.
We also found that children wanted
to include their virtual pet in their
photos and to have the ability to
take a photo with their pet at any
time. The ability to capture photos
had initially been restricted as a
method for completing and logging
activities and so evolved to be an
always-on activity in itself.
Although we initially found it
difficult to test prototypes with
children this became a highly
valuable activity once we changed
our traditional approach.
CHARACTER I L LUST R AT I O N
The look and feel for the service
was established after creating
a number of mood boards and
testing these on a group of
potential users.
It was established from this
research that our target audience
were particularly interesting in
a combination of young and cute
robots. I created a few illustration
routes and returned to the user
group to further refine how our
characters would look. This process
continued until we were happy
with the feedback received.
A flat style was decided on that
hinged around a cut-out animation
system that would allow for
interchangeable parts on top
of an animatable skeleton. This
would give us the most flexibility
in terms of expansion and also
enable us to give expression to the
character with the least associated
development cost.
This was became the brief for other
illustrators to create an initial pool
of custom parts that would be
released with the MVP.
GOBOTS 13
B RI NG I NG IT ALL TO G ETHE R
The user interface was designed
to complement the qualities of
the illustrative style. All elements
were created using block colours
and in a flat style. The look and feel
was influenced by other children’s
applications on the app store and
research done on mood boards
created in the character illustration
stage of the project.
The content and language was
designed to be friendly, personal
and easy to understand. Most of
the communication would take
place via simple iconography to
help with varying reading ages of
the children using the application.
The idea being that this, as with
the complexity of adventures,
would increase with the child’s
progression.
14 GOBOTS
This was the first larger scale
research and development project
a n d f i rs t n at ive a p p l icat io n
at Suburb. Gobots went on to
influence more expenditure in the
R&D space as well as influencing
the hire of an ios developer and
illustrators.
“I love playing with my GoBot. I
gave him tentacles and yesterday
we made a cake together.”
- Emily, Age 6
Some of the decisions made during
my involvement were removed
when considering and releasing the
minimal viable product on the app
store. Even as an MVP it is receiving
positive reviews from users and
is currently in the next stage of
development.
T H AN K YOU
FOR READI NG
TO F I ND OU T M O R E
P L E A SE G ET I N TOUC H




07954356705
[email protected]
www.franklynonsense.com
uk.linkedin.com/in/alexgreaves