Educational Mini Game

About this project

In a subtle and playful way, this short game makes players aware of the urgency to begin investing in solutions for the challenges that are facing VodafoneZiggo’s network.

Project Brief / Challenge

How might we make Vodafone-Ziggo’s senior managers understand that society’s exponentially growing appetite for data will outpace the network’s capacity if they do not act with urgency?

Project Details

Client	VodafoneZiggo
Main Stakeholders	Employees & Board of Directors of VodafoneZiggo
Position	Project Manager & UX Designer
Roles	Responsible for: Project Management, UX, Coding & UX of Final Prototype. Contributed to: Context Research, Ideation, User Research, Concept Development, Prototyping.
Team	4 people (Team Leader, Project Manager & UX Designer, Lead Research, UI/Visual Designer)
Period	12 weeks, 2 days a week

Client
VodafoneZiggo

Main Stakeholders
Employees & Board of Directors of VodafoneZiggo

Position
Project Manager & UX Designer

Roles
Responsible for: Project Management, UX, Coding & UX of Final Prototype.
Contributed to: Context Research, Ideation, User Research, Concept Development, Prototyping.

Team
4 people (Team Leader, Project Manager & UX Designer, Lead Research, UI/Visual Designer)

Period
12 weeks, 2 days a week

Final Product | prototype

Mini Game on Interactive Screens

A short game to make players aware of the urgency to begin investing in solutions for the challenges that are facing VodafoneZiggo's network

We created an educational mini game that can be played on interactive screens in the communal spaces of VodafoneZiggo’s main office.

During the game, players have to keep up with the data demands of their customers, which is exponentially growing, by drawing a network. As time progresses, it is getting increasingly harder to keep up with the demands, resulting in a lot of stress and time pressure. If you can’t keep up, your customers will leave and the game is over. The longer you last, the higher your score.

The game is as a simplified reflection of the real challenges VodafoneZiggo’s network is facing, to raise awareness about the urgency to act now and invest in solutions.

Watch the video to get a sense of this product in use.

The scheme above is an attempt to visualise the process as clear as possible.
In practice however, it was less linear and full of iterations.

Design Process

Project Management

I created a custom teamwork methodology, shaped to our needs, based on a Kanban board and stand-ups on monday (to create a backlog for our main goal that week) and friday (to reflect on our work and look ahead).	Teamwork Methodology
Creating a general planning for our 12 week project, has helped me to guard our desired design process in a flexible but safe way with overview. Sometimes a phase needed more time, in which case I would review our planning, consider priorities and find ways to make it happen or not. This has been a living document.	Project Planning

Teamwork Methodology
I created a custom teamwork methodology, shaped to our needs, based on a Kanban board and stand-ups on monday (to create a backlog for our main goal that week) and friday (to reflect on our work and look ahead).

Project Planning
Creating a general planning for our 12 week project, has helped me to guard our desired design process in a flexible but safe way with overview. Sometimes a phase needed more time, in which case I would review our planning, consider priorities and find ways to make it happen or not. This has been a living document.

Context Research

Domain Research	Research in both technical & design domain and mind mapping our findings was necessary to get a better understanding of the domain and just where and what the actual problem/challenge was.
Brainstorming & WWWWWH	Using a WWWWWH format, we defined the context from where we started brainstorming: “How might we ‘solve’ the problem with design?”

Domain Research
Research in both technical & design domain and mind mapping our findings was necessary to get a better understanding of the domain and just where and what the actual problem/challenge was.

Brainstorming & WWWWWH
Using a WWWWWH format, we defined the context from where we started brainstorming: “How might we ‘solve’ the problem with design?”

Design Challenge

“How might we make Vodafone-Ziggo’s senior managers understand that society’s exponentially growing appetite for data will outpace the network’s capacity if they do not act with urgency?”

Needs & Requirements

Main need: “To understand the urgent consequences of
exponential data growth on VodafoneZiggo’s network”.

We decided to broaden the audience from only senior managers to the whole company, to better provide this need.

Inspiration

We particularly searched for inspiration (products which a similar purpose) in other domains, to prevent getting stuck on one perspective and find new and interesting ways to approach our challenge.

First Ideas

We starting with a brainstorming session with the team to quickly generate a lot of ideas and inspire each other. We then voted on the most potential ideas as a starting point for the concepting phase.

3 Concept Directions

Direction 1:	Interactive Data Visualisation (digital)
Direction 2:	Interactive Narrative (digital) Together with our client we decided to go into this direction, because it was the most promising medium for communicating and reflecting all the (real) choices and trade-offs involved.
Direction 3:	Group Workshop with ‘Smart’ Physical Product

Direction 1
Interactive Data Visualisation (digital)

Direction 2
Interactive Narrative (digital)
Together with our client we decided to go into this direction, because it was the most promising medium for communicating and reflecting all the (real) choices and trade-offs involved.

Direction 3
Group Workshop with ‘Smart’ Physical Product

Concept Definition & Development

Interactive Narrative

After we knew which direction we should aim for, we starting defining and developing an interactive narrative concept. We defined fundamental elements like the storyline, world, and characters. Next we continued with defining and mapping the questions/situations we wanted to include, each followed by three possible answers/choices. We used flowcharts to map the necessary posibilities and screens needed.

Building the Prototype

We chose to build a clickable prototype, mainly because of time constraints. It enabled us to prototype fast, and we didn’t need any programming to communicate the functionality of the prototype, so it was a perfect match.

The only thing left was building the prototype: designing the UI & UX, creating all necessary screens and assets, and creating & testing the gameflow interaction.

First Prototype

Interactive Narrative

The prototype provides the opportunity to fast forward into the possible futures of VodafoneZiggo’s fixed-network. Players will navigate a series of choices that present various (real) problems and their potential solutions. They will be presented with different consequences and endings depending on the choices they make.

This visually enhanced storytelling technique is intended to convince VodafoneZiggo’s management of the urgency to begin investing in solutions for the challenges that are facing their network.

User Testing

We had our test subjects play the interactive narrative, while we observed their behaviour and choices in the backgound. We also captured screenrecordings, to analyse this again later. After the game was finished, we interviewed them to get a better understanding of their experience and opinions.

User Tests Analysis

We analysed our user tests data using Affinity Diagramming. From the insights we got, we derived 3 Design Principles, which we used as the backbone for rethinking our concept.

Our main insight was to create a feeling of stress and time pressure while playing the game. This, among other important insights, made us realise we should take a couple steps back and do another concepting phase, as our current concept/prototype was inherently not fit to live up to our new Design Principles.

Rethinking Concept

Generating New Concepts	With a fresh look and our design principles in mind, we generated several new concepts.
Concept Decision	From there, we extracted patterns, evaluated their value in relation to our design principles, and combined some strong ideas into one solid concept.
Rapid (Paper) Prototyping	To define our concept further and evaluate its potential, we did Rapid (Paper) Prototyping.
Final Concept	We ended up with a concept that was drastically different from our first concept/prototype. This concept was much more focused on creating that feeling of stress and time pressure. Yet, the reflection of the real challenges VodafoneZiggo’s network is facing is still very much present.

Generating New Concepts
With a fresh look and our design principles in mind, we generated several new concepts.

Concept Decision
From there, we extracted patterns, evaluated their value in relation to our design principles, and combined some strong ideas into one solid concept.

Rapid (Paper) Prototyping
To define our concept further and evaluate its potential, we did Rapid (Paper) Prototyping.

Final Concept
We ended up with a concept that was drastically different from our first concept/prototype. This concept was much more focused on creating that feeling of stress and time pressure. Yet, the reflection of the real challenges VodafoneZiggo’s network is facing is still very much present.

Concept Development

We created storyboards & a clear concept sketch, to get a better sense of how we could best develop the concept into a final prototype and get us all on the same level of understanding. From there, we divided tasks & responsibilities amongst each other for the development phase.

Product Development

Functional Prototype

Because of time constraints, we decided to create 2 prototypes:
1) A functional prototype that captures the physical, interactive component of our product & to test the feeling of stress and time pressure it should create.
2) A visual prototype, that conveys the aesthetic qualities: style, sound, animation, and user feedback.

This division of both purpose and labor allowed our team to bring the product to a presentable stage, before combining the two and creating the actual final prototype. This was to be sure, if things would go wrong, we wouldn’t end up with an unpresentable, unfinished product.

I focused on Building/Coding the Functional Prototype. By prioritising the various needed and desired features, I was able to work ‘safely’ and effeciently.

User Testing & Product Optimisation

Functional Prototype

We did some small scale user testing to optimise the feeling of stress & time pressure, and test players’ reactions/opnions of features like ‘disconnecting customers’ and ‘power-ups’.

Combining prototypes into one:
Final Prototype

In the end we had enough time left to try and combine the functional prototype with the visual prototype, and deliver one final, fully functional and implementable prototype.

See details about the Final Prototype at the top of this page.