THE CHALLENGE
one game, many goals
research
To better understand the position of children’s interactive media in our society, I read up on academic papers analyzing digital learning games, played countless hours of online games, and met with a Common Sense Media director to get insight on the parent perspective.
Early Insights
To succeed, the game needs:
Engagement
Progressive difficulty.
Recognizable patterns.
Consistent level baseline.
agency and guidance
Real responsibility (own decisions).
Clear goals & feedback.
Simple story and tutorial for context.
To capture themes of growth and creativity, we explored several nature-inspired ideas such as gardening and flower breeding. We ultimately chose a flower shop concept where children take on the role of the shop owner, designing wreaths for customers. This idea incorporated skills like counting and spatial reasoning in an engaging way.
Skill tested
Math through precise wreath orders.
OBJECTIVE
Create wreaths for customers.
TESTING ROUND 1
PRESCHOOL TESTING
My team and I visited a local preschool to get a sense of how children like our concept. We used whiteboards and flower magnets to play and asked them open-ended questions about how what they liked, wished, and wondered about the game.
takeaways
satisfying clicks
The click of the magnets kept children attentive and excited.
JOY IN creating
Children took pride in the act of creating wreaths for others.
no gender bias
Both boys and girls were equally engaged.
A clearer concept
flower fraction game
Include an image of the flower shop concept.
Agency level
To test the effect of agency on learning, we opted for 3 versions of the game with varying levels of choice. The elements that change are client and bow selection at the end of completing each wreath.
bow
client
The two elements that change in each version.
MOST Agency
Customer and bow selection.
Medium Agency
Only bow selection.
Least Agency
Neither customer or bow selection.
With a clearer concept, I was able to move onto rendering in the game engine, Unity.
Early game rendition in Unity.
key changes made
hobby objects
To make customer selection a more conscious choice.
no autoplay
Manual arrows instead so the child decides their pace.
