Project Definition
Natural Park for Math is an online Math education solution for 1st-grade Primary school students. Educational experience takes place in a colourful and funny natural environment like a natural park. In a game based environment, you met with some people who are working in this park and while watching animations and using interactive objects you also complete tasks that are given by those employees of the park.
The Challenge
For the primary level students, creating an engaging and supportive learning experience for all students and creating an effective learning environment is one of the most challenging tasks for us. Another challenge was creating content that was successfully aligned with the overall game based scenario of the product.
My Role
My responsibility was to drive and lead end-to-end product design that includes adapting instructional requirements into appealing visual outputs as an art director, creating an addictive game based environment with a fancy style and designing a user experience that takes into account of perception limits and engagement levels of 1st-grade students.
The Approach
We started with competitive analysis with similar products, best practices and try to understand their strong and weak points. At the same time, some of our team members focused on gamification and game-based theories. Differentiation of these two terms and positioning our product in between them was a challenging issue. We focused on creating a game scenario and embed game-based learning functionalities to this scenario. The visual style is another challenge for us. We created various mood boards and tried to create a visual language for user interface and digital content.
Problems and Solutions
We wanted to create a product that supports Different individual learning styles by
- creating sets of characters with their own voices, ambient sound effects, enriched dialogues between characters to support the flow of the scenario
- creating a kind of visual learning style,
- making an approximation to existing mobile gaming styles with real-time 3d visuals,
- using vibrant colours, particle effects, and micro animations
- encouraging students with multi-level award system.
Impacts
Our product is currently at an MVP level and didn’t release because of the dramatic changes in the curriculum of 1st-grade level lessons include math. But we have a chance to make concept testings and interviews with focus groups and stakeholders. We got very positive feedback, about the general look and feel of MVP and the sense of appealing game-based learning product for primary school students.
