Mission Countdown

Eliminating separation anxiety in children through gamifying connection.

Time

2 Weeks

Team

2 Product Designers

Role

Research
UX
Visual

Deliverables

Design System
Figma Prototype

We designed Mission Countdown - an interactive calendar game for young children to connect with traveling parents.

This was a capstone project at Dartmouth College. I collaborated with my co-designer in the design process, conducting primary and secondary research, bouncing off ideas, and prototyping. All the research analysis, features, wireframes, visual and interaction designs highlighted in this case study were designed by me.

Background

Many parents travel extensively for work, while their children stay home.

37.3%

of active duty U.S. military service members had children in 2018.
Military One Source

463.6m

domestic corporate business trips happened in the U.S. in 2018.
Statista

PROBLEM

Although technology helps us stay connected, they fail to consider how young children foster connections and their inability to conceptualize time.

Children have short attention spans and connect through play. So during video calls, children don’t stay on for long, making parents feel disconnected. Furthermore, children couldn’t understand when their parents were coming home, which led to separation anxiety.

OPPORTUNITY

How might we create a playful way for young children to connect with faraway family and understand when their loved ones will return?

Solution

Mission Countdown

A planetary calendar game with daily collaborative gameplay that engages and connects children to their parents.

Visualize Time

The visual calendar utilizes planets to represent the length of the parent’s trip. Every day, the spaceship with the child’s avatar moves a planet closer to the parent’s avatar, helping the child to intuitively countdown to their reunion.

Daily Challenges

Each planet unlocks a new mission game, which promotes daily interaction between the parent and child. The gamified experience facilitates natural conversation and keeps the child engaged in the social interaction.

Mission Countdown

Solving the pains of separation through delightful connection.

Process

Research

Background

Given the prompt of loneliness for our capstone project, we utilized qualitative research methods to empathize and understand loneliness. We conducted initial user interviews, asking questions about their relationship with their children, siblings, or parents, as well as their experiences of loneliness.
We were inspired by a child of a deployed military parent who said,
"the root of all loneliness is a lack of connection."
And we decided to focus on young children and parents who travel for work.

Research

User Interviews

In order to find out whether video calls were fulfilling the need of loneliness, we conducted in-depth user interviews with:
Military parents and their children
College kids with younger siblings
Traveling parents & their children
Our questions sought to gather information about the current experience of parents and children, the limitations of existing connection methods, and the pain points that barred virtual parent-child connection.
To identify key themes and pain points, we used affinity diagrams to organize interview insights.

Research

Personas, Empathy Maps, Journey Maps

Based on user interviews, we created empathy maps and user personas that helped us further understand our target users and empathize with their perspectives.
Then we created user journey maps to differentiate steps that occur in the parent-traveling process and highlighted the opportunities with potential to improve:

DEFINE

Needs

We synthesized our qualitative data and findings into key insights and pain points:
Pain Point #1:
Young children are unable to visualize time, and they are not able to conceptualize the return of their parents.
Pain Point #2:
The current medium for communicating over location & time zone constraints fail to consider how children connect.

DEFINE

POV Statement

Young children need a playful way to engage with faraway family while visualizing their time apart in order to feel connected.

Ideate

Goals

Playful
Users should have fun while using this platform, and the interactions should thoughtfully facilitate natural communication.
Intuitive
User’s interactions should be simple and reinforced by feedback, so users can quickly comprehend concepts of time and gameplay.

Ideate

Brainstorm

College students shared that playing online video games with their younger siblings back home helped them catch up naturally. This made me realize that gamified, shared experiences engage children, facilitating connection through natural communication.
Using the Crazy 8’s method, I brainstormed 8 possible solutions, and I expanded my sketches based on the idea of a virtual calendar game.
Given the tight constraints of time for this project, we decided to prioritize these MVP elements from the child’s perspective to integrate into our app.

PROTOTYPE & TEST

Low Fidelity Wireframes

To quickly evaluate my ideas, I translated my favorite sketches into greyscale mockups and tried variations of the landing page to explore a wide array of possibilities. I mainly experimented with how to visually represent information in a way that would provide intuitive understanding of time for users.
Visual Calendar Landing Page
For constructing the landing page, I thought of four different ways to represent days in a visual timeline. So I decided to run a quick Multiple Variant Testing to evaluate which was the most intuitive option for users.
Usability Findings - I found that children connected with the space theme in Option C because it visually represented the physical distance between the parent and child. Furthermore, users reported that a space theme made the parent’s trip feel like a fun space mission.
Multi-Player
I then explored three different ways to design the multi-player screen and used Multiple Variant Testing to evaluate which was the most appealing visual for users.
Usability Findings - Users preferred the consistent space theme in Option A because it helped the interactions be perceived as a unified game, while reinforcing the reframing of the trip as a mission.
Daily Challenge
I also built out the screens for the first daily challenge game, adding a layer of connection to the traditional game of Tic-Tac-Toe by replacing the O and X with video messages.
Usability Findings - Users liked the added level of connection through video messages, and thought the game were simple and accessible for their younger children. They also wanted the communication games to provide leading questions to help initiate conversation.

PROTOTYPE & TEST

User Flow

I broke down the MVP features into user task flows, considering the insights from usability testing to think about the different interactions each feature would require.

PROTOTYPE & TEST

Visual Design System

Based on the usability findings, I constructed the style guide before moving unto high-fidelity designs.
Colors
The palette’s primary colors consist of white, blues, and yellow to create a space-themed background. The secondary colors include a wide variety of vibrant colors, adding a playful balance to the darker background. By utilizing bright colors, the gameplay felt positive and fun.
Typography
I used the Staatliches font because all letters are capitalized, making it is more accessible to young children who are often confused about the difference between uppercase and lowercase letters when learning to read. My co-designer also pointed out that the blocky, flat ends of each letter felt playful and arcade game-like, which reinforced the theme.
Overlay Cards
The cards incorporate two methods of closing: an “X” in the top right corner, and a close Call to Action button. Our user research found that young children who struggle with reading selected the “X,” and the children who can read preferred the “close” button in order to display their reading skills, so we decided to display both options.

PROTOTYPE & TEST

High Fidelity Prototype

Designing the Virtual Calendar
One of the main pain points that children encountered was conceptualizing time, as they repeatedly ask how many days until they see their parents. To address this pain point, the visual countdown calendar represents planets as days, helping users intuitively understand the amount of time before they are reunited with their loved ones.
8 Days Until Reunion
7 Days Until Reunion
The spaceship with the child’s avatar begins on the Day 16, or the allotted duration of the trip, and it moves a planet closer to the parent’s avatar each day. Each planet contains a new Game Mission, and as the child’s avatar is moving through planets in the spaceship, they feel like they have influence over the parent’s return.
Designing the Gameplay
I designed the Mission, or the daily challenge game, to facilitate natural conversation and help the child stay engaged in the social interaction. Each day unlocks a new Mission, promoting daily parent-child interaction, while the gamified experience allows for genuine conversations.
The first Mission is a video form of Tic-Tac-Toe. Instead of “O” and “X,” the spots are filled when users record a video answering a prompt given by the parent. This promotes verbal conversation, allowing the parent to ask relevant questions, while providing the child with ample time to craft a thoughtful response.
The second Mission is Draw Together. The parent can tailor the prompt to match the intellect of their child. The users asynchronously draw in order to overcome time zone constraints. The prompt, “Draw Your Day,” is an example prompt for how parents can promote conversation and feel involved in the day-to-day activities of the child.
Both players can access the game results from previous planets and Missions. As a result, the parent can track their child’s development, and the child has a souvenir of their challenges with their loved-one. Although the current prototype only presents these two Missions, we received inspiration from user feedback to innovate further connection-oriented games.

PROTOTYPE & TEST

Usability Insights

1. Suggest Horizontal Scrolling
Users often did not know that they were able to scroll horizontally. By shrinking the visual calendar and adding numbers by the planets, it allowed increased visibility of the past dates on the initial frame. This helped foster instinctual understanding of the horizontal scroll feature.
Version 1
Version 2
2. Gameplay User Flow
We found that users do not read instructional text, and they attempted to play their turn before watching the video. Therefore, we changed the user flow so that the users would receive clearer prompting of when to watch the received video, or when to play their turn.

Reflect

Takeaways & Next Steps

Mission Countdown was created to address the problem of connection between parents and children, accounting for the unique challenges that they face through a delightful and playful platform. From children who didn’t want to stop playing with Mission Countdown to parents who expressed that they wished they were able to use this app when their children were younger, we received very positive feedback from our users.

This capstone project was both a challenging and rewarding experience. While working under the tight deadline of two weeks during a difficult final exams period, I learned how to prioritize features to produce a final MVP that fully addressed the pain points of the user. Furthermore, I enjoyed the process of solving a prevalent problem for families today, and was excited about how design opportunities could be found everywhere.

For future iterations of Mission Countdown, I hope to extend our prototype to include the user flow for parent users, and conduct more rounds of user testing.

Thanks for reading!

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