Studio Update Week 14

App Wireframe

After decideing what the main features of our app will be, we each went off to ideate on how we though the app would function through wireframing. This is my app wireframe below. Overall, it was not the hardest part to do as I am quite familiar with the process of wireframing due to previous project. Though it was a bit difficult to balance all the features of the app and make it move smoothly.

On Monday we had to come back to show the progress and update each other on the ideas for the app. Overall I had the most work done in terms of the process of how the app function in comparison to the rest due to my experience. SO they mainly used mine as the base to start with along with Celine as she had done a much more in depth version of the sign up page. Some minor add on that we thought of was allowing the avatar to be full body and showcase the clothes they wore. The clothes worn take inspiration from the games available at the arcade. We also thought of maybe adding something like games stat/heath bar in the profile picture. The stats will be based on the segments we catogorise the games in allowing for easier comparison in the leaderboard.

Service Blueprint 1.0

Based on our current solution, we made a service blueprint to better illustrate how we thought our service would look like. This was done together as a group during our discussion on Monday.

Feedback from lecturer Tuesday

On Tuesday, we had a discussion with our lecturers on the progress we had done for our solution. They had a few concerns regarding the direction of our solution, with its emphasis on the winning of prizes. Even though we had identified that it was the coming back to play that was the gap, we did not really have any sufficient data that it was because customers were disappointed about the prize offerings. In that way, would it better for us to change our target audience to a new group instead because we needed to prove that teens don't go back to the arcade anymore. The objective of our design wasn't clear as we weren't resolute on what we wanted the teens to do: to come back on their own or with a group of friends. In that way it was quite a leap away from our framing of that it is who we play with and not the games. What we needed to understand was that the pain point isn't the lack of reward but the lack of a climatic end, the lack of retention. The rewards is only a small part of this cycle. From what we presented last week, it gave the idea of how it is about strangers finding new friends and it was the bonding that truly matter. One more additional note on this end would also be the data management of app and that it can be very expensive as a solution

Reevaluation and streamlining of our solution

After receiving this feedback we decided to reevaluate our solution and decide what our main focus should be as currently our ideas were many but not fine tuned towards the angle we wanted.

We decided to focus on who we wanted to target and what we wanted to foster, which is the friendship and bonding experience. We narrowed down what was the ideas that could best fit the core principle that we were focusing on. We narrowed down the features of the app to this 5: Personalised avatar, lobby system, tournament/areana, leaderboard, and badges for various acheivements.

Spliting up of task to do for next week

From there we decided to split up the task we needed to do. Celine and I was left in charge of the app while Zoyee and Adelaine was left in charge of the mascot and branding portion of our project.

Refinement of wireframing

First, me and celine discussed what was important to the app and we looked at the old wireframing of the app and decided to cross out the features that we would no longer be working on.

We also took a closer look at our lobby map design and we thought of how we wanted the page to look like and what information it would display

From there I would focus on the overall flow of the app due to my familarity while Celine was focus more on the details of the lobby system. This was what I did, I decided to segment the app to the different main component to make easier to understand.

Development of App on XD

On Thursday, we continue to split up to work on our individual parts, with me and Celine going through what we had ideated on during Wednesday. We decided to start on the XD prototyping file first, with me teaching the basics of it to XD which is relatively simple. This are the layout we have done, taking inspiration from a more retro style of app. This is just the barebones with colour and font to get the gist of the app.

Additional feedback Thursday

Following our discusion on Tuesday, we met with our lecturer (only Mr Lim today) to further discuss our progress that we had made. He was impressed by the progress we had done and that we have found the focus of our service. The question he had left for us is what else can we celebrate as we only focus on the games in our leaderboard and badges. This is not the most important point of our service but we should still give it some thought even if we can't resolve it. Also in regards to data transferance from the games played to the app, the card should be acting as that transmiter as of now. In regards to the app, me and Celine has thought through the entire process of the app which is a good thought exercise. However most of it will unfortunately not be shown in the video and slides, so we need to make some executive decision on our storyboard. Lastly, we should think of the reason they go to Timezone and the reason for them to comeback in our solution and video.

Further Discussion

After the feedback on Thursday, we continued to discuss the feedback and decided to go through and update the progress done on both end. We also got the edited colour scheme from them as they had sent us an incompete one previously as well as the fonts

Colour scheme 1 & Font

Colour scheme 2

We also took the time to rediscuss the ending of our solution and what else we could reward players with besides the games. Zoyee thought of maybe introducing a quiz at the end to let friends rate each other to receive unique rewards. But it would add a lot more complication to the app and there is not really that clear of a reason to implement it due to the vastness of the things we can rate them on. Other ideas we played around with was redeeming some sort of gift at the end to winner. But if we implement a special prize at the end, then once you win them all, there is no incentive. We decided that just an additional add on of ticket would be sufficient as a rewards since Timezone has a large amount of rewards offered.

Finally, we decided to go through what the video should be and we discussed the flow of the video alomgside the app. Zoyee is very familiar with the video editing and she had a clear ideas she wanted to do. So we left her to ideate and draft out the script for the video while we settle the rest of the stuff