It is January 2021, and as I'm writing this the pandemic and the lockdown coming with it still isolates people for their safety. Being outside and taking a break from our monitor light to, catch fresh air and enjoy a bit of natural light are important for our mental health. Especially younger people tend to stay home and spend most time on their computer (me included). Leaving the comfort zone, going on a stroll and move in nature seems something a lot of us desire, but the motivation decreases since there’s YouTube and Social Media.
There are plenty scavengerhunt games that excite and motivate many people to leave their houses. But collecting items in nature is unsafe during a pandemic.
What can we do to motivate gamers and couch potatoes to leave their comfort bubble and explore their environment safely?
I started with a competitive analysis to get an idea of what I've been signing up for but also to research what other games do to solve the problem. It's important to learn what is out there already and evaluate what works for others and where are opportunities for improvements.
Some SWOT analyses of PokémonGo and Geocaching helped me to sum up key information and find opportunities for our scavenger hunt app.
Onboarding simple, sometimes interactive. Still difficult to get into, depending on the gameplay's complexity
Often based on a strong and popular franchise like Pokémon or Harry Potter
Either physical objects in the real world or depending on AR technology
Competitive aspects like comparing stats and also rewarding by growing stats and collecting items
Apps are free, demos available or essential features weren't hidden behind a paywall to gain users trust
No alternatives for limitations during the pandemic and hygiene measures if physical objects are involved
Team play is not actively encouraged
Scavenger hunts are usually more fun in teams. Unfortunately, the pandemic makes it harder to keep in touch with our friends, family or coworkers. The opportunity is to design a game that allows people to coordinate and play together remotely. That doesn't only allow people to explore their environment in a new way, it also helps to enhance personal relationships and build trust with coworkers in times that might make us feel alone.
Analyzing competition is one thing, but who is our audience, and what do they really want? Do they even like going out or play games on their phone? I conducted a survey and interviews to get a better picture of the audience we want to design for and to understand their lives and potential problems better.
After a day, the survey had 25 participants from Discord servers mostly, and I evaluated the following results:
Onboarding simple, sometimes interactive. Still difficult to get into, depending on the gameplay's complexity
Often based on a strong and popular franchise like Pokémon or Harry Potter
Either physical objects in the real world or depending on AR technology
Competitive aspects like comparing stats and also rewarding by growing stats and collecting items
Apps are free, demos available or essential features weren't hidden behind a paywall to gain users trust
No alternatives for limitations during the pandemic and hygiene measures if physical objects are involved
Team play is not actively encouraged
The interviewees gave similar answers, additionally I was able to collect more information about their personal circumstances during the pandemic and also what they liked about our competitors:
PokémonGo and Ingress seem very repetitive and collecting rewards didn't keep them to play
Topics/Franchise not interesting enough to give it a shot
Curfew makes it harder to fight in arenas with friends or strangers during the pandemic
Game needs to be immersive, interacting with the environment kept them playing
A shared activity would motivate to leave the house, but friends living far away makes it harder to connect
After collecting the necessary data from spontaneous discussions and planned interviews, I started creating personas to visualize our audience, find out pain points, and make it more personal to understand our future users better.
Jae Hwa is a teamleading Creative Director and based in Düsseldorf, Germany.
“I spend most of my days in the office or working from home. I’m leading a team, and I’m also responsible for design processes. So, keeping the crowd together isn’t always easy in stressful times.”
She wants new team-building methods with outdoor activities to help her coworkers to build trust and be more active. In her free time, she would like to explore her city and get to know it better.
She believes that having breaks and activities sets creativity in motion and that a solid connection and trust within her team is extremely important for productivity. Going out, interacting, and getting to know the environment gives her different perspectives on things and inspires her.
Coming up with activities for team-buildings is time-consuming. Additionally, the pandemic makes it harder to walk around freely and interact with coworkers, friends, and family.
Kyle is a Student and based in Toronto, Canada.
“I just started going to college. I don't do much in my free time. Mostly I'm hanging out with my friends on Discord to play games together and going on trips with family.”
He doesn’t feel like going out and usually needs good reasons to do so, but he wishes he was more motivated to be more outdoors.
Kyle wants to do other things because being in his room most of the time negatively affects his mood. He believes that interacting more with people and the environment would improve his well-being.
He feels like the place he lives doesn't offer many activities or locations, so he doesn't see the point of going out and doing nothing. His friends live far apart, and he can't motivate himself to visit them without a car.
It seems like there's a need to (re)connect people and will to leave the house more. People are aware that being outside helps them to stay active and be healthy. Giving them a platform or game that rewards them for going out and interact with their environment or lets them solve tasks with their coworkers and friends without being in-person could help to change their habit of staying inside and socialize without the risk to get infected.
Jae Hwa’s design team keeps growing. Many new faces and characters bring new wind to her current team. She believes that her coworkers need to get to know and learn to trust each other in order to create great products together. She wants to organize and prepare a team-building session, so everyone gets to know each other and solve entertaining tasks as a team.
Kyle’s family plans a trip to a rural area with the whole family. Usually, he doesn’t really participate in their activities and it’s the only occasion he uses Social Media more actively to pass time. But this time he decided to try something new and get to know the environment he has to be stuck in any way.
After talking to people and gather information, I started to pin down problems I found and worked on concepts for potential functions to solve those.
Since creating games is not the easiest task and can be quite overwhelming because of the complexity. I think creating a flow chart first helped me a lot to visualize the solution for user's needs and understand potential challenges.
Based on the first user flow chart, I started sketching Lo-Fi Wireframes to visualize the key features from the chart.
To to test the key features, I built an interactive prototype with the first visual design ideas that came to my mind, based on the wireframes. Designing user-centered had a higher priority for me during this stage and I didn't want to waste too much time on a strong visual design. I also wanted to give enough freedom of interpretation to gather more feedback from participants.
Because of the pandemic, I conducted the usability test remotely via Discord and Zoom. I asked six different kinds of type of people (from outdoor person to indoor gamer) to solve given tasks with my prototype. The tests took roughly 20 minutes, and I was able to observe the participant's actions and reactions in real-time.
The main pain points were lying in functionality issues, element sizes, and color schemes. In some situations, the wrong elements were highlighted and the right elements ignored.
Also, most participants liked the light-hearted tone, the overall design and features. Some said it looks too professional for a game.
Iterations and additional usability tests and surveys became my friends and helped me to improve the features and visual design for Schnitzeljagd. In the end, I asked people from different design communities and users to leave comments or messages with screenshots for screens and features that feel off or what they like. Later on, I evaluated their comments and improved the prototype.
Unfortunately, the short timeframe made me rush some tasks and drop ideas for now. Having the minimum viable product, the next step would be finishing the remaining frames. Findings and completing quests alone or with a team need more value as in better rewards too. And of course usability tests after iterations. Also, reconsidering some design decisions like at some point I was wondering why I didn't use the whole space for the menu content.
The most important thing I learned is how important interviews and usability tests are. Not only did it help me to leave my introverted comfort zone, but practice the right questions. It's fascinating: I never knew how wrong my assumptions for my design decisions could be and it showed me that even if things seem trivial to me, but for others, they might not be at all.
Second, sticking to the design thinking process even though I have to repeat steps over and over again turned out to be the safe route. After a couple of attempts, I noticed frustrations and insecurity building up with each testing. I wasn't sure where it came from, since I'm considered a patient person. Detaching myself personally from the product helped me to deal with feedback and responses better. After realizing that, I was able to use every finding to improve my design.
