Padmore City Jun 2017 – Sept 2017
Process
Padmore City is an educational game platform to enhance the professional development for the chartered accountants workforce.
Studio Role
Project Lead for a team of 3, Senior UX Designer and Frontend Dev
Brief
The project brief was to deliver a proof of concept prototype including a chat bot and interactive game workflow. Working with set educational content to create a gameflow engine for accounting professional development and an expandable SaaS Platform to other educational modalities.
Tech
XD, Illustrator, GIT, Less, HTML, javascript, LAMP Stack using custom model driven MVP Framework, Chat Bot, Jira and Confluence.
Details
In depth UX research and analysis was required to model the educational content for gamification, creating an educational gameflow engine.
Learning tasks were then structured into narratives to be communicated in a chat bot technology, allowing varied user responses and game awards to the educational content.
Wireframes and Informational Architecture models were then created to story board the user journey for a proof of concept prototype.
Character designs were the developed to interact within scenes that where access by a game map based on a city to show the progress of the user in their learning pathways.
A simple html image based prototpe was created for the proof of concept prototype. Interactive Hotspots layered over a full page background with image swap replacement for UI elements emulated the functionality of a full user interface.
A functional chat bot was developed, with scripted pathway loops for emulating a complete gameplay. This pathway was based upon a questionnaire format to test the users retention of the educational content. An information architecture model was required to map the outcomes of the answers from interaction with the chat bot.
Character design was developed around the ability for the user to create and customise their own avatar as the game progressed. This style design in a flat graphic style that could be in harmony with the UI components of and education system while also be able to interact in the landscape of the greater world of the game play.
Reflection
This was a fun project that required the development of the background structure, logic and framework of a game theory to create an interactive prototype.
The chatbot technology was still fairly primitive in its interactivity, so the need of a convincing format was critical was in the user experience.
The importance of story telling and the visual theatrics of the reveal to reach through the UI components is paramount in delighting the user in their experience of the end product.