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Alicerex

Client: BradField Narrative Design Inc.

 

Role: UX Designer

 

Part of a team of 5 including: 1 Developers, 2 artists and another designer.

 

Category: Web Application

 

Year: 2020

MY RESPONSIBILITIES​

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  • Conduct user research, client interviews, expert interview and field studies;

  • Create user persona and analyze user pain points;

  • Create product wireframe and design high fidelity prototype;

  • Present product design to the clients and gather feedback weekly;

  • Validate product design by coordinating, facilitating and conducting user testing;

  • Interpret data and qualitative feedback;

  • Create, maintain and update the product design system and UI library based on clients' requests;

The Problem

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What is the future of digital storytelling when you no longer have to turn the physical pages? How can we improve online teaching and learning experience both within the classroom and homeschool settings?

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Problem Statement

Covid19 has made us realize the role digital media plays today. Learning is an essential aspect of everyone's life, particularly students, and distance learning is encouraged almost everywhere.

It is necessary to make it easy to use for elementary school children. The current issue with distance learning in high school is that most students find it difficult to concentrate on online education as it gets monotonous and the physical aspect of learning is lost with a lack of interaction and access to physical resources. We think digital storytelling is a process of sharing stories and creative visuals with others. Using digital storytelling as a learning experience for elementary school students can involve a lot of factors.

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In short, the primary problems is that COVID 19 is forcing students to receive remote education.

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  1. How can they have more fun in remote education when they lack interaction with others?

  2. How can we provide more resources while libraries are not easily accessible?

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The Solution

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Alicerex is a storytelling web-game for elementary school students (age 6 to 10). It is more interactive than traditional paper books. Users can explore the story from a first-person perspective in this virtual world. The game is built on unity and can be run on the web. We have conducted user tests and continuously iterated game art to make this game more visually appealing to children.
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Play the game here: https://projects.thecdm.ca/alicerex/

RESEARCH Summary and preparation

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This section is the key to have a successful and deep insight discovery. Before starting the discovery phase, I took a series of steps to ensure I cover all aspects of the problem and all the necessary supporting information. To gather all the information, I conducted client interviews, expert interview and field studies.

We did literature reviews about the impact of educational uses of games. From Wendy Hsin-Yuan Huang’s article “A Practitioner’s Guide To Gamification Of Education”, we learned that gamification can be a powerful education strategy when implemented properly, as it can enhance an education program, and achieve learning objectives by influencing the behavior of students.

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From Dr. Hochman, we learnt that people would suffer from low literacy ability if they did not build up a solid literacy foundation from childhood education.

Expert Opinion‍

I interviewed Jing, an educator in kindergarten and primary school with children teaching certification and five years of experience as a teacher.

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Feedback

  • Eyesight Health

  • Focus shorter than 20 mins

  • Need to be guarded by parents when using digital devices

  • Let children tell the story

  • Young children won't tell if they are interested in certain content

Our Hypothesis: We can create a less-than-20mins interactive storytelling experience and give kids a chance to tell stories in it as well.

Interview with Parents

After user research (user interviews and expert interviews), we summarized three main user needs:
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  1. Traditional physical books lack interaction, which leads to a lack of interest in reading among young students.

  2. In distance education, it is difficult for students to stay engaged alone at home.

  3. The most challenging part of improving children's literacy is how to combine audiovisual materials.

I conducted a series of steps in the discovery section using the information I gathered in the interview and field study during the research stage. These steps included:

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  • Target audience

  • Persona & Empathy Map

  • Pain Points

  • User Storyboard

Target Users

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6-10 YEARS OLD SCHOOL CHILDREN

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Our primary potential users are elementary school students in the age range of 6 to 10 years old who are interested in storytelling, educational video games, and digital learning experiences. Our product targets elementary school students who want to improve their speaking and reading ability in English.

Persona & Empathy Map

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Pain Points

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  • Remote learning ---- less interactive with teacher and classmates ---- need more interaction

  • More time at home ---- boring ---- need something more engaging, such as digital storytelling

  • less homework ---- more time to spend ---- need to learn something as a compensate material

  • the foundation of future life ---- improve literacy skills

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WHY DIGITAL STORYTELLING?

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Digital storytelling is a process of sharing stories and creative imaginings with others.
An informal learning environment will become more popular with its virtual, hybrid, interactive, and dynamic characteristics to make up for physical reading shortcomings in the short future. It will be a new way for children to learn better.

User Storyboard

DESIGN PROCESS

Key Features

More Interaction

It is more interaction than traditional paper books. Users can explore the story from a first -person perspective in the virtual world. Story with the voiceover keep children engaged. 

Web-based

This game is built on Unity and is web-based As a result users can play it without download it, and there are no computer system limitations.

Children-Friendly

We have conducted user tests and continuously iterated game art to make this game more visually appealing to children. 

Wireframe

Storytelling

Our client, Bradfield Narrative Design, also put forward their expectations for our product. They helped us to adapt the stories of ALICE, our project guide by taking into account our target user group. After consultation with our client, we finally decided to use the Australia series of stories.

Visual Script

Level Design

Final Prototype

A playable demo

Art Style

Game Screenshots

Link to our game: https://projects.thecdm.ca/alicerex/

Future Development

In the future, our products still have the potential to continue developing. In our current prototype, the story only covers the first chapter. There are 12 chapters in Alice's story in Australia. If we can get the guidance of education experts, we can continue to write more stories. There is a room to development and a lot more educational user functions. Currently, the educational function is to let students take quizzes. In the future, we plan to add creative writing tools by providing students with some art assets to let them become their storytellers.

Justice League

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