bringing a game to life
Designing and coding a flower shop game to support developmental research.
role
Product Designer & Developer
Timeline
June - Sept 2025
Tools
Procreate, Unity
Organization
Davis Media Lab
wreathies
Exploring Agency in Play
The Davis Media Lab conducts developmental research on how media and technology influence children’s learning. Many educational games offer limited choice in play, even though exploration is important for learning. However, there is little research on this topic, and so this app serves to help us answer questions about how children learn from interactive media. As the lead product designer and developer on the team, I created the game that brings this research direction to life.
game goals
Understand how giving children more control during play influences engagement and learning.
Create game variations tested at a children's museum.
my role
As the lead product designer and developer, I designed the game mechanics, created the visual assets, and built the playable prototypes in Unity. I checked in with my team and tested with children throughout the entire process.
solution preview
Start screen.
Gameplay screen.
one game, many goals
I wanted to create a game that balanced research objectives with player engagement. The game needed to be fun, intuitive, and visually appealing while collecting meaningful data.
📍
Museum of Science and Curiosity of Sacramento.
secondary research
understanding the game Landscape
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. I summarized my findings into these insights.
key game elements for success
ideation
To capture themes of growth and creativity, we explored 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.
🧠
player objective
To encourage users to explore the map after submitting feedback, it must be easy to navigate. Users can use their prior experience with Google Maps to navigate the map.
📊
skill tested
Understanding fractions
Basic arithmetic
Pattern recognition
experience journeys for 2 students
Given that I was a student at the university, I was immersed enough to create 2 student personas and supporting journey experiences for each.
Experience journey map for the doubtful user persona.
ideation time
Now that our team had a solid understanding of the high-impact information and ideal user experience, we proceeded to the ideation stage.
early concept
one central map
A single map hub prioritizes high-impact campus building data.
feedback and subsequent improvements
We did follow-up testing with the same students and re-prioritized the content crucial for meeting our goals.
Sidebar hierarchy updated; feedback submission moved to the top.
Tip map removed and replaced with one relevant comfort tip.
Story bubble design redesigned from generic CTA to narrative card.
final design
A single, central map simplifies the experience and prioritizes the key info of campus-wide building data.
Vote breakdown adds transparency by showing how each building’s votes split. Users see totals for Hot, Warm, Comfortable, Chilly, and Cold for each building.
Success stories follow a student's comment, the fix it led to, and the comfort and energy gains that follow. This feature supports our goal to teach how building changes save energy and improve comfort.
Validation testing
We tested with 20 UC Davis students to validate our designs. Here are the results.
Map Markers
85%
understood vote size and color.
Vote Breakdown Graph
65%
reported improved understanding of temperature trends.
Map Filters
60%
found filtering intuitive and useful.
success stories
85%
learned about heating and cooling.
Next steps
learning lessons
bringing a game to life
up next…
solution preview
Vote breakdown graph to increase transparancy.
THE CHALLENGE
one game, many goals
I wanted to create a game that balanced research objectives with player engagement. The game needed to be fun, intuitive, and visually appealing while collecting meaningful data. It is now being played at the Museum of Science and Curiosity in Sacramento.
secondary 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.
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.
