Grow Together
For the Adobe + Nickelodeon Creative Jam, my partner (the magnificent Brice Bai) and I were tasked with creating a tablet experience for kids ages 11-13 using Adobe XD that incorporates elements of the Nickelodeon brand and either auto-animate or voice command features in XD.
Problem
From the Design Jam: help kids feel safe, informed, and connected in the spirit of #KidsTogether. Design an Android tablet or Apple iPad app that provides a safe way for kids to communicate, share, and connect with their friends and family.
Solution
Grow Together allows kids to cultivate their own virtual world through building a virtual garden, and through doing so, learn more about COVID-19 prevention, stay active in doors, and communicate with their community by messaging and sharing photos, videos, and creative projects. It also allows parents to monitor kids’ progress and activity, message in family group chat, and control kids’ content.
Research
Through our research, we’ve concluded the following:
| Kids Love: | We Decided: |
|---|---|
| Learn through doing | Opportunity to watch educational videos and complete activities with Nickelodeon characters |
| Surprises and challenges | Daily quizzes about Nickelodeon characters and health tips about keeping the household safe |
| Feedback and rewards | Earn “seeds” as in-app currency for purchasing plants for the garden; instant response to actions, such as quiz submission |
| Ease of navigation | Simple navigation consisting of taps and scrolls |
Design Decisions
Garden: I was responsible for creating graphical contents, as well as exploring the interactions for the garden page. In the garden, kid users can water their plants and access a market to purchase plants with in-app currency. They can also access their friend’s garden and water their friend’s plants, which allows them to stay connected to their friends.
Carousel: At the top of the Explore page, kids can see their friend’s activity, which encourages them to check out different activities and do more on their own, thereby cultivating healthy competition.
Explore: We want the Explore page to be the portal for kids to learn and have fun. On the Explore page, kids can explore indoor activities, take quizzes, and watch videos and read articles about the pandemic. “Seeds” can be earned through consuming content, and serve as the impetus for keeping users engrossed.
Parental Control: In addition to the kids' interface, we designed a completely different flow for parents, giving them more control over and opportunity to interact with their kids. Parents can set daily maximum time, monitor viewing activity, approve activity completion, and suggest activities and educational content for their children.
Process
User Flows
For Kids:
For Parents:
Results
- Finalist team in the competition, winning 6th place out of 145 teams. The world-building aspect of the design was appreciated by the judges, who advised the creation of an even more immersive experience. In the future, introducing varieties of plants and making the app revolve more around the virtual world are possibilities for exploration.
- Furthermore, had there been more time, user-testing with kids is another direction worth attempting. It would have allowed us to pinpoint the interest of the specific demographics. Researching what apps are used and loved by kids in the age group would offer insight into whether our design was too playful, and whether middle schoolers would consider it too childish.
