Give & Grow
Gamifying the Toy Exchange Experience
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This project was a class group project done for Information Architecture course at University of Texas at Austin.
Give & Grow is an app that promotes sustainability and child development by facilitating the exchange of used children's products and incorporating gamification and educational content. It also encourages environmental conservation through donations and the use of second-hand toys.
Project Overview
Project Duration
Jan - Mar 2023 | 3 months
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Role
I collaborated with three other UX designers on the project's Generative research, product strategy, Lo-fi sketches, Prototyping and Visual design
Team
Team of 4 UX Designers
Problem Definition
There are 24 billion kids globally between the ages of 0 to 14.
Parents end up buying a lot of items for their kids such as toys, furniture, clothes, and educational activities as they are consistently looking to help their kids grow their functional and educational skills.
As these kids grow up, kids' items are discarded, leading to a lot of waste of resources and causing a negative impact on the environment.
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" How might we design a marketplace app that not only facilitates the seamless exchange of children's products but also empowers parents to engage their children in the sharing process, fostering the development of socio-emotional skills?"
Usage Research
We conducted usage research to understand how parents buy, sell or exchange used children’s products and how do their children feel about the process?
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6
Users Interviewed
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Interview Moderator
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User Types: Should have at least 1 child​
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Note Takers
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Usage Settings: Use both online and offline methods to purchas
3
Cities
User Personas
After conducting research, we derived that parents usually involve children in making decisions to give away old and used clothes and toys . Thus, we finally narrowed our user types to two different categories
Parent using the app to buy and sell products
Children will play games, learn values and gain reward points
Information Architecture
The process of designing the information architecture for our educational app began with extensive user research, which informed our decisions at every step. We conducted affinity mapping sessions to organize user insights into key themes and pain points. Card sorting exercises helped us categorize and prioritize content, ensuring it aligns with user goals. Finally, we created the information architecture by defining primary navigation elements, content categories, and user flows, all of which underwent iterative testing and refinement based on user feedback to ensure a user-friendly and intuitive structure.
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Observations to Insights- User research synthesis
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Affinity Mapping
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Open card sorting
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Information Architecture
Scenarios & Designs
User Scenario 01
Goal: Upload a product to the marketplace
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Natasha, a parent, wants to list her child's unused toy for sale in the marketplace to clear some space and earn extra money.
Steps
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User navigates to the marketplace section.
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Views available items.
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Clicks "Contribute" or "Sell."
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Fills item details and uploads images.
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System checks image quality using AI.
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Receives confirmation on successful upload.
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User Scenario 02
Goal: Customizing Educational Content for kids and Managing Wishlist
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Natasha, a parent, wants to personalize her child's learning and manage the wishlist for potential marketplace purchases.
Steps
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Natasha logs into the parent account.
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She adds educational items from the marketplace to the wishlist.
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A notification badge appears on the ChildZone icon.
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Natasha selects values and skills for her child's learning.
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She chooses educational content aligned with the selected values.
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Emily, the child, engages with the content in ChildZone.
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Emily earns progress points and unlocks the virtual mall.
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Emily selects virtual items as rewards for her progress.
User Scenario 03
Goal: Earning Values, Progress Points, and Unlocking the Marketplace
Emily, a child using the app, wants to watch educational videos and play games to earn values and unlock the marketplace to view her reward points.
Steps
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Emily opens ChildZone in the app.
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She watches educational videos and answers related quizzes.
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Emily plays educational games, earning progress points.
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Accumulating enough points, she unlocks the marketplace.
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Emily enters the marketplace to view her rewards and make selections based on her progress.
Styleguide
Usability Testing And Insights
Once our high-fidelity prototypes were built, we used usertesting.com as a medium to test our prototypes.
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We did 9 usability tests for the built prototype over usertesting.com where the testing audience was filtered based on the audience being parents of children between the ages of 3 to 8 who own a smartphone and could record themselves.
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After 9 rounds of testing, the team took cumulative insights by observing the audience’s expressions, the screen, and how they interact with the application, and taking the comments received from each of the questions. We did 3 rounds of testing, drew insights and iterated the prototype at each stage.
Few Key Insights
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Unable to identity the +(add) button
Unable to identify the wishlist ( heart ) icon
Confusion in color for path finished in rewards
Users were unable to understand and observe the toggle icon to switch between the parent view to the child view
The mall getting unlocked was not observed by the users
Users get confused about what a child needs to do once the mall is unlocked
Learnings And Future Recommendations
Safety
Creating a safe exchange experience is essentials in this domain
Perspectives of Children
Researching with children can provide better insights in designing the experience
Values
Considering emotional experiences of the users brings value to the product differentiating the product in a generic transactional market
Device flexibility
Ipad version should be explore for child as children mostly used iPads.
User Delight
Adding Micro interactions, sound & reduce data will make it more interesting for children
Gamification system
Strategizing a proper rewards, points and value system that is easy for users to understand.
Research methods
Contextual inquiry with children, testing with children, diary studies with parents.