AR Educational Game: Case Study
9 min read
Time-frame
2 Weeks
Software
Sketch, InVision, Torch
2 Weeks
Software
Sketch, InVision, Torch
Brief
Our goal was to redesign an existing educational augmented reality app by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) called Free Rivers. The app initially received attention because of its technology, but ultimately had poor reviews and engagement. In our current environmental and political climate, it is increasingly important to design effective educational tools for children and older age groups. This redesign gave our team an opportunity to expand on the original premise of the app and make it more immersive.
My Role
I had a wide range of responsibilities as the primary designer. I engaged in early user research and testing that I used to develop 3D user flows and wireframes. Informed by these initial steps, as well as ideation sketching and user insights, I developed final mockups and augmented reality scenes.
Why Augmented Reality?
We needed to discover if augmented reality was the right technology for this use case. We began by doing heuristics testing on Free Rivers, immediately the pros and cons were apparent. The user places a 3D model on a flat service and walks around it manipulating parts of the landscape and learning about the socio-economic factors surrounding dams and river energy sources. It was engaging and unique, but the set up was difficult and it was much too easy to skip through all of the educational components.
With AR apps being so new to the market, especially those focused on education we knew we needed to dig deeper. So we took the reviews from the app store and affinity mapped them to find any insights. The root of the problem had to do with the limited depth of the app and lack of engagement. We generated the following I statements that came from analyzing user reviews.
- I want to experience AR
- I need an app that is easy to navigate
- I need a more engaging storyline
- I need an app that is easy to navigate
- I need a more engaging storyline
Augmented reality apps that fail to live up to a user’s expectations of the technology ultimately suffer from poor engagement.
We did more analysis by user testing the app with 5 adults and children and found these statements to echo as true in everyone's experience. The learning modules were small text boxes overlaid onto the screen, these were not immersive in comparison to the animated 3D model, so people skipped them. In general, people found themselves out of things to do in less than 10 minutes and did not retain much information, the kids lost interest quickly and wanted to play more.
Opportunity
After synthesizing this data we needed to find what worked well from Free Rivers and capitalize on that while addressing the pain points users encountered. We also needed to address the content of the app, for an app marketed as 4+ we found the verbiage and concepts to be very high level for children. Knowing augmented reality was a big draw for the app we wanted to keep this technology, but find the best way to utilize it.
We decided to build an augmented reality app centered around the WWF’s core mission, with a focus on empowering children to impact the future of their environment.
WWF's Mission is to stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by: conserving the world's biological diversity and ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable.
How do we help children empathize with environmental issues while still having fun and feeling engaged? We began ideating on potential solutions and researching childhood education to validate our assumptions. We researched empathy through gamification and immersion as well as which structures best supported learning and retention in children.
“Learning includes three levels: active, constructive, and interactive learning. - Socially interactive and constructive learning trump active learning, in which a child does something such as manipulate objects or rehearse material; in turn, active learning is better than learning through listening in the absence of activity.” - Association for Psychological Science
Most Effective Child Learning Types
We pivoted our focus from rivers to the endangered species supported by the WWF because this new direction serves as a more engaging, emotionally-appealing subject for children.
This direction gave us the basis for creating a game that is fun and immersive for children but in the long run will promote empathy towards endangered animals and their environment. From interviews and research we found many parents were playing these games with their children, as well as cases of older kids who were more independent. We developed two personas, April and John. April is a mother who enjoys engaging with her son through educational games, this is a case for socially interactive learning. John is a 13 year old who is interested in nature and finds the idea of an AR animal game interesting, because of the technology he will primarily benefit from active learning.
Exploration
With our users and direction defined we began ideating through hand sketching. I drew scenes that focused on the idea of an augmented earth being the map and the user “travelling” to varying locations. Another focus was on the element of discovery, they would visit these locations as explorers and have “wild” encounters with animals along their journey.
MVP
Quickly we realized that our ideas were very abstract on paper and we could not test them this early like you could with a 2D product, we needed an MVP that was in 3D so we could test and gain insights from the actual AR experience.
I quickly found a process of iterating with hand sketching then working in Sketch to create our 2D vectors and Torch to create low fidelity augmented reality scenes so I could quickly test and repeat. The MVP was made in a day and I designed a home/map scene based on our sketches where the user selected a location on an augmented earth. Based on their selection they were sent to a scene where the user explored a forest looking for a panda.
We then spent the following days user testing 5 children and 5 adults on our MVP. Great insight emerged on what did and didn’t work, especially when testing children. Everyone reacted very positively to the discovery scene where they traversed an augmented forrest searching for the panda, this created the wow factor people wanted with an augmented reality experience.
What did not work was the navigation and educational components of the earth scene. We found using a 2D info card was very basic and much less engaging than the rest of the prototype. We knew we needed to expand upon this experience but think of the educational information in a much more immersive way, we were thinking far too 2D initially.
Pivot
These user tests inspired a big pivot in scope, we needed to take these core concepts and make sure that both the educational and navigational components were engaging. This as well as interweave them into a narrative that was more immersive in order to achieve a sense of empathy towards these animals. We returned to another round of research and began developing a refined user flow and second prototype. Our further research pointed to the psychological reasons our info cards failed.
“Humans learn best when they are actively involved (“minds-on”), engaged with the learning materials and undistracted by peripheral elements - drill and practice may foster rote learning of facts, but it is not likely to promote deeper conceptual understanding.” - Association for Psychological Science
The 2D info card and video failed because we weren't taking advantage of what makes AR immersive, which is the opportunity to feel like you are stepping into another world.
We dove into research concerning children's books and movies and found the narrative trope that was most powerful was having a character that acted as a guide to the child. I started white boarding our story arch, using this we designed a story that would include the real world narratives surrounding panda endangerment and the child would get to act as the protagonist.
We incorporated a story to create a deeply immersive experience that helped the child feel like part of the solution.
We knew in order to help guide and educate the user we needed a mentor figure and this resulted in us developing our character Roger the Ranger. Using Apple’s Memoji’s we could develop lo-fi characters that could engage the child in their journey, Roger acted as a source of teaching and guidance to help the child traverse the scenes. This in addition to us giving the animals a voice and personality capitalizes on the unique value of a game where we can give the children the animals perspective. We continued to focus on Panda’s and China for our prototype as they are the representation of WWF and a successful endangerment story.
We made the child the explorer in order to empower them to partake in a story where they are the one making a difference, something they can model in their own life.
Solution
We developed new scenes dedicated to education and narrative. The first lets us introduce the child to pandas and their environment and meet the characters. The second presents the problem of environment encroachment and presents the user with the opportunity to save a separated panda. These scenes act as an on-boarding experience that familiarizes the user with the icons and interactions in the scenes, so when they go to explore and find the panda they are tested with what they have learned so far.
Iteration
We then user tested this with children and adults to refine our interactions and flows within each scene. In order to empathize with children using the app I started designing scenes from a chair to mimic their height range better. This as well as paying close attention to how many steps within the space it would take for them to navigate, all of which increased usability for our target age group.
Navigation
A unique consideration to augmented reality flow design was the users physical position upon each task completion. I designed the flows to mirror each other, so if I guided the user in a certain direction in one scene, the next scene had to take them back in the opposite direction in order to efficiently utilize space.
We went from having the user pressing buttons move to the next task, to building in small micro interactions in order to advance the scene. For example spotting a bird or feeding bamboo to a panda. These helped the transitions of scenes but also acted as more engaging tasks for the user to partake in.
Using 2D icons in a 3D space presented unique challenges, like how big they are in relation to the person's body as well as how they would be perceived in context with a physical environment. The navigational icons used to guide the users walking flow needed to be enlarged and refined, we found from testing if we used a circular shape people wanted to plant their feet within this. So I used this to our advantage and enlarged the icon so it naturally signalled for the user to “stand here”. This in addition to the narrative of our character were used as the primary sources for navigation.
Save My Planet is a fully immersive AR game, which addresses the theme of wildlife conservation in a fun, engaging narrative where children learn about animals and threats to their habitat as an explorer who is a part of the solution.
Overall our final solution at the end of our 2 week sprint captured the core concepts and solutions from our initial ideation. We achieved our goal of creating more immersion for the user and then using a storyline and character arcs to weave in the education in a fun yet informative way. Our development relied heavily on user testing as this was the most effective way to gain insight on an AR project.
Retro and Meeting with WWF
In retrospect if we were to do a phase 2 it would primarily focus on the usability of the earth scene when it comes to introducing new animals and environments. Lastly adding more animals as well as a feature that involves coming back to check in on them or have social interactions with your friends and their saved animals would help people return to the app more often.
We had the opportunity to speak to the lead developer at WWF and receive feedback on the project. He loved the concept and mentioned they were in the early stages of working on something similar, this was an excellent learning experience and validated our solutions market fit.