Collaborative Augmented Reality gaming app
Project Outcome
High fidelity prototype for a mobile application with Augmented Reality Interface and Graphical User Interface.
What I did
Research
Product strategy
Storytelling
AR Prototyping
Usability testing
Team
Vershanjali Chauhan (Me)
Elizaveta Kravchenko
Monika Agarwal
Sneha Balakrishnan
Talia Potochny
Tools
Figma
Adobe Aero
Adobe Dimension Blender
Procreate
Google suite
Duration
12 weeks
Process: The Agile way
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Lo fi testing
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Hi fi testing
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Affinity mapping
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Personas
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Data modeling
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Value proposition
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Interviews
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Survey
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Contextual inquiry
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Competitive analysis
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Crazy eights
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User flows
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Information architecture
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Paper prototyping
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Wireframing
Redefining problem statement
How might we bring people together in a post covid world through the power of interactive games ? "
Features
AR Escape room
game
Play anywhere
Multiplayer
In-person
collaboration
Solution
An Augmented reality escape room that can be played from the comfort of users' homes solving puzzles collaboratively using a mobile device and TV screen.
Phase 1. Discover
Initial Survey
This project involved a problem statement that could be solved through multiple ways. So, we started with conducting an online survey.
Research goal
To ascertain which activity users believe facilitates social interaction?
Participant types
18-35 years old
Students and working professionals
Participants
50
Initial research findings
Users want to build a social circle but find it hard to meet new people who they can easily interact with and form connections.
Users meet new people at house parties, gym, hobby classes but don't know how to break the ice and develop long term friendships.
Users love playing digital games with other people but also miss the good old days of laughing with friends while playing physical games.
Users find playing games a good way of forming connections while having a fun experience allowing them to organically start conversations.
Brainstorming 1: What kind of Gaming?
After our initial user research, we knew gaming is a good domain to design solutions in. But, gaming is a huge domain and we wanted to narrow down to few elements within gaming before framing goals for the next part of our user research. Hence, we brainstormed as a team to narrow down on the kind of game we wanted to find solutions through, the technology, in person/virtual/hybrid and theme.
Some ideas: Interactive board game, interactive dinner table game, Interactive twister (VR/AR), AR scavenger hunt, AR escape room
Idea selected: AR escape room
Brainstorming 2: What kind of a game?
Now that we had finalized an AR escape room, we wanted to ideate on the game concept and target market. To arrive at a concept, we divided it further into story/context, space, game mission, elements, interactions, devices used, time constraint, who would play it and why would someone play it.
Common themes
Some of the common game themes identified after our brainstorming were:
Storytelling
Storytelling built into the user experience.
Fully body experience
In a post covid world we wanted our users to have an in-person experience that helps them become more physically active.
Multiplayer
We wanted to create a collaborative game that brings people together in person.
Customization
Flexibility for users to choose storylines and customize elements as per their group size.
Augmented Reality
Explore technology that helps achieve the right experience for our users.
Puzzles
Puzzles that users solve collaboratively.
Contextual inquiry
We carried out observation studies by visiting a physical escape room and by playing virtual reality escape rooms. This helped us in understanding the spatial factors of escape rooms, narrative & puzzles design, visual factors, user's mental models, and synergies in interactions between physical and virtual. The understanding of these factors imparted us with the right approach to combine aspects of physical and virtual in the Augmented reality scenario.
User interviews
We conducted interviews with 10 users who were representative of a diverse set of users. We ensured that we had enough users from our target user group.
We divided our interview into 4 parts: Social, Games, Technology, and Escape room. We wanted to understand our users' thoughts, habits, mental models, frustrations, and delights in all of these areas to get a holistic understanding of the domain.
User interviews raw data
Competitor analysis
Once the product idea was finalised, we conducted a thorough competitive analysis to strategise our value proposition and differentiation in the market. This helped us innovate on differentiating features of the product and have a larger vision for the product.
Phase 2. Define
Affinity Mapping
We carried out Affinity mapping with the user interview data and found a lot of interesting insights. Some of them
were:
Personality types
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Our target user group is a mix of introverts, extroverts & ambiverts. This was an important insight in designing a game which addresses all of these different personality types, lets users interact with each other in a way that is comfortable for them. This also meant that each personality type had different pain points.
Sociality
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People enjoyed having a central activity to do together .
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They also preferred a medium to small number of people (5-7) to gather with.
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Food and drinks were a big part of hanging out together.
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People go to house parties to organically meet new people for dating.
VR and AR
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Not many people knew about AR but they liked the idea of coming together to play for a common goal.
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A few more have used a VR headset before, but not all.
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A lot of users liked the AR game Pokemon Go.
Games
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A lot of people we interviewed really like playing board games but do not play as much anymore.
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Video game preferences were mixed with some enjoying them, others only playing with friends, and some enjoying to play alone.
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People enjoyed escape rooms overall especially because it is a central activity to play together.
User's mental model
Activities that enable users to organically interact with people and help them get out of the awkwardness are helpful.
Users want to play fun and easy collaborative games that can be played while eating/drinking at a party.
Users feel excitement when playing games together.
User pain points
Game flexibility
Users want to have flexibility to choose the number of players for a game.
Social anxiety
Some users deal with social anxiety and find it hard to initiate conversations in social settings.
Cost
Users are unable to hang out more often with friends because going out is expensive.
Social anxiety
Some users deal with social anxiety and find it hard to initiate conversations in social settings.
Inconsistent quality & variety
Users struggle with inconsistent experience of escape rooms and the inability to enjoy playing the same escape room game.
Challenge
Users want an activity that can challenge their minds.
Meeting new people and dating
Users want to interact with new people without a filter to form real connections. Users go to house parties in order to meet new people for dating.
Personas
As per our user research, personality type influences how users interact with other people in a social setting and how they approach playing collaborative games. Hence, we anchored our personas on personality types and defined their mental models, habits, needs and pain points.
The Extrovert
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The Introvert
2
The Ambivert
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Phase 3. Design
Ideation
As storytelling is a key aspect of our app, we started with ideation of the narrative on which the user flow will be
based on. Mood boards and brainstorming helped us to come up with a storyline.
Storyline : Claustrophobic
It’s Xmas eve and Santa is out delivering presents. You and the other elves decided to celebrate a hard year’s work, and went a little too hard on the Xmas spirit(s).
You find that you’ve broken into Santa’s workshop, drank all his good eggnog whiskey, and are now snowed in.
You and your friends have 45 minutes to find another way out before Santa flies back to the North Pole - or you may be out of a job.
That's where our escape room game begins!
Storyline mood board
Crazy 8s - Interaction ideation
Once we had decided on the rough storyline, we used the crazy 8s technique to come up with ideas for interactions. This technique help us come up with 40 unique ideas as a group and helped us warm up for the phase of design.
User Flow
The game prototype will have 5 puzzles to be solved by users collaboratively.
The user flow explains the game flow (happy path) with the onboarding, the puzzles, devices used, and interactions with respect to five different clues used in this particular game: Claus-trophobic.
Information Architecture
For developing the information architecture, we divided the app into two parts: Onboarding and game.
Information Architecture: onboarding
Information Architecture: Game
Initial sketches: Onboarding screens
Wireframing
User Testing
We conducted user testing in two stages. To do our low-fidelity testing, we had to use innovative approaches for prototyping the low-fidelity elements and testing them out with users.
Low fidelity testing : Wizard of the Oz technique
We chose to do the low-fidelity testing using paper prototypes with 7 participants.
We took printouts of 2D elements for AR and some team members held them in their hands and acted as the backend to show AR elements when the users scan through the phone.
We used a cardboard phone screen as the interface to interact. One team member used a soundboard to give system feedback for user interactions.
We tested individual puzzles and got data on what interactions made sense to the user and how they operated in the ecology.
User Testing: Puzzle 1
Users tried to imitate interactions most intuitive to them on a mobile screen to solve the puzzles given in this AR Escape Room Game.
User Testing: Puzzle 2
Users tried to imitate interactions most intuitive to them on a mobile screen to solve the puzzles given in this AR Escape Room Game.
User Testing: Puzzle 3
Users tried to imitate interactions most intuitive to them on a mobile screen to solve the puzzles given in this AR Escape Room Game.
Lo - fi user testing insights
UI Design
Once the usability issues were resolved, we moved on to design the final screens in Figma. Our goal was to create a visual identity that’s aligned with the brand’s values and message, which is: “have fun”. Also, we've checked the competition and took a deep dive into our catalog of references for inspiration.
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We wanted to keep a game vibe so we went for purple and red hues.
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The game is currently designed keeping in mind a mobile phone as the primary device.
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The typography selected is fun yet formal, so it is readable throughout the game.
Hi Fidelity prototyping
Onboarding screens
AR screens
Select Theme for your Game Night
Device Used: TV
Game: Claus-trophobic
Once your game theme is selected, the TV device connected will set up the background story and set the mood. The AR elements & clues will be set as per your room scan done during the onboarding process.
Puzzle 1
Puzzle 2
Puzzle 3
Puzzle 4
Phase 4. Evaluate
High fidelity testing
We conducted high-fidelity testing using Adobe Aero and tested out the actual interactions with AR elements. The users solved each puzzle and we had a script with post-task questions to understand how users are interpreting the game.
User Testing insights
User Testing insights
Puzzle 1
Puzzle 2
Puzzle 3
Puzzle 4
Want to try the interactions?
Download Adobe Aero on your phone
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Scan the QR Code
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Play!
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Learnings
Overall this project challenged us in a lot of ways and surprised us when we discovered our own potential that we weren't aware of. We pushed the boundaries each day and strived to create the most fun, delightful and immersive experience for our users.
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Designing a game was a very fun experience in terms of the UX design process. While it is based on the UX methodology, we had to come up with innovative processes in order to address the nuances of designing a game.
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Designing a game required rapid iterations at all stages like initial brainstorming, ideation, design and testing. Because of the dynamic nature of a game, ideas evolved at a fast pace.
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While researching and designing, we realized that designing game experiences involve a lot of factors like physical, social, emotional, digital, technological and ecological. The user's mental model has to be understood from each of these perspectives and the game has to be designed in such a way that the conceptual model matches it.
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Creating an interactive game with immersive elements is way harder than making and testing screens. Not only does the interface have to be usable, but it has to be fun and engaging too.