Prem Kishor ⋅ 5 min read
Xplore - Learn concepts through games
Team
1- Product Manager
1- UX Designer (me)
1- Game Designer
4-5 Content creators & Digital artists
My role
Drive the research & create scalable UI guidelines for digital artists.
Duration
Q1-Q3 2020, During Pandemic
Target audience
BYJUS students
Grade: 3 & 4
Age: 6- 9 year old
Background
“Xplore” part of BYJU’S – After completeing a VFX and animationed video lessons, revision exercise options are very basic BYJUS App. To encourage interactive learning Team decided to introduced "Xplore" games to make the learning concepts fun, engaging.
"Xplore"was co-created with BYJU’S students during the pandemic. we built "XPLORE" mini-games to increase the engagment and LO clarity.
More than 500 games were built on the platform to ensure that a student’s learning experience is simultaneously interactive and effective.
Problem
Current learning revision exercise options have low user engagement because of their basic and simple interface and experience design.
-
Low completion rate
To enhance user engagement acquisition BYJUS decided to recreate a new feature "Xplore" games.
UX Challenges / Contraints
-
The size availability on BYJUS app - 2 MB.
-
Used a very basic open-source tool (GDevelop) to support the BYJUS app's current code.
-
Pandemic situation - Remote qualitative research.
-
Optimize the workflow to deal with vendors to produce 500+ games.
Design Plan
Secondary Research (UX audit)
White paper research
E-learning games are aimed at the achievement of learning objectives via the creation of a flow effect. The scale developed in the present study consists of
Eight dimensions:
-
Immersion
-
Social interaction
-
Challenge
-
Goal clarity
-
Feedback
-
Concentration
-
Control
-
Knowledge improvement.
These elements of games can be used as a skeleton to create interactive learning games.
UX Audit
To understand why current revision exercises in the form of games are not doing so good.
Key insights of Secondary research
We discovered that most of the game components were missing from the current games.
-
Immersion in games - user don’t have a channel to connect to the alternative world.
-
No social interaction.
-
Challenges are achievable.
-
Goal clarity was clear
-
Feedback was not delightful and not efficient.
-
Concentration level -
-Low concentration level
-Leads to low impact on player mind.
-Basic aesthetics.
-No story at all and simple theme. -
Control lack of control in users hand.
-
knowledge improvement - Missing.
Primary Research
We planned to have our primary research in 2 phases.
Observational research method
Phase 1 observed user behaviour and empathize them.
​
Participatory design methods: Co-create
Phase 2 Rapid prototyping assignment
User reqcruited from 6 cities
Phase 1:
Participants/sample size
-
10 students in 6 cities
-
Ages: 6- 9 year old
we started with online interview calls with each participant in a structured format to get honest answers from our users.
1. Echo calls/Rapport Building
1:1 Conversation around how users learn new concepts and how they connect play, fun and learning together.
2. Virtual Play
%20playing%20PubG5%20during%20virtual%20play%20session.png)
Arnav (age 7) playing PUBG during virtual play session
“I like this game because we can
talk to our friends and make
new friends”
%20playing%20Clash%20Royale%20during%20virtual%20play%20session.png)
Vaibhav (age 8) playing Clash Royale during virtual play session
“Jo battles hote hain uske trophies bhi milte hai. Cards upgrade karke usko aage level mein use karta hoon”
Emerging Hypothesis
The users do understand few components of the games but it is was very basic. we wanted to analyse that how our users can use their understanding of games creating principles to create thier own version of games.
Phase 2:
-
REMOTELY CO-CREATE
Each kid spend 2-4 hours on a rapid prototyping exercise. Here are some images and key insights from the session.
-
Progress in the levels as they play.
-
Character design and power-ups.
-
Hints & Clues within the game to navigate through or complete the quests.
-
Collect points and badges that help in gameplay
-
Complete missions to earn rewards.
-
Kids incorporated learning through:
-
Puzzle-based games
MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
Based on our research and key insights we build our first few MVP (Few mini-games)
We made sure that we use all the basic components to build our games within tech limitations and specific to our insights from research.
-
Immersion in games & concentration and Goal Clarity:
To increase the Immersion in games and concentration level we integrated few suggestions:
-Characters
-Enhanced aesthetics
-Intriguing storyline and narration.
-The learning objective should be clear to the user.
-Challenges are strong motivators which induce users to take the expected actions. They are effective tools assisting to increase user
-Voice over to help the user read and understand the challenges 2X faster.
-
Feedback:
-Instant appropriate and constructive feedback to the user, based on their triggers.
-Delightful feedback to encourage users to perform better.
-The catchy sound effect enhances the feedback efficiency.
-
Hint/Tutorial:
-Hints help the user when they couldn’t figure it out. Prevents chaos and saves time. this leads to high user affordance.
-When instructions are clear it increases the sense of immersion and the user’s mental model.
-Instructions should be consistent in pattern and efficient to convey the message.
-
Trackable progress/levels
-Hints help the user when they couldn’t figure it out. Prevents chaos and saves time. this leads to high user affordance.
-When instructions are clear it increases the sense of immersion and the user’s mental model.
-Instructions should be consistent in pattern and efficient to convey the message.
First few MVP game videos
User testing - Field research
Sample size - 23 Participants (Controlled group)
Age group - 6 to 8 years old
Gadgets - Comfortable in using tablets, laptops, PC and mobile.
Number of games: 4
Learning from user testing
We observed:
-
Minor: Text reading and voice-over were not so effective to sync with user reading ability.
-
Major: In one game template, the tutorial on the first question led the user to behave in the same gesture letting to make wrong choices.
To enhance the text-reading ability we integrated a text-reading highlighter to keep user in sync. but integrating this interaction was difficult in GDEVELOP tool. so we dropped this idea.
To prevent any chaos from the tutorial on the first question, we created an unbiased tutorial without showing features on the real question level.
How we achieved the size of "2 MB".
We preferred 2D visual skin. it was easy to develop with manpower by following a visual asset guidelines
Final UIs of Xplore games
Entry point in the app
Wireframe of the game with different skins
Finally, we created a very intuitive design game, based on very basic interactions. Basic Interactions like Tap, Drag and Drop, and swipe. Why? because we found when the interactions are simple and intuitive, the player/user would always give more attention to problem-solving thinking instead of analysing how to take the next action.
​
to expand the production of these games we built details UI/UX guidelines for vendors to make process faster.
Final UI guideline
Product success!
-
High completion rate of 85%
Learnings
-
Learned how to use limited time and resources.
-
Collaborated with other design departments (Game design & Digital art design) at the same time.
-
Experimented with full remote research which helped to understand alternative methodologies.
-
Learnt a new game development tool to make new features compatible with BYJUS aap.
What’s next..?
• Social interaction - Ability to Add friends - to bring more engagement and promote healthy competition
• Create a separate app for Byjus games and use advanced tech with a positive intervention in the world of interactive learning
I’d love to join your design team to build the next revolutionary product together! Just send an email.
Let's work together!