nutriNUT — iOS Game

How to encourage kids to eat healthy food?

USER
Kids 4-9 years old
Parents
Teachers
Government-run
educational programs

MY ROLE
UX Designer
UI Desiger
Product Owner (Scrum)
Project Manager
Game Designer
Promotion Designer
Presenter

TOOLS
Paper prototyping
Whiteboards, post-its
Slack
Google Photos.
Sketch, Invision
Adobe Illustrator,
XD and Photoshop
Unity Game Engine

TEAM
Pushkar
Frank S - Developer
Nick K - Art
Manni Z - Art
Mohi P - Art
Dougal M- PO, Research

︎GAME DEMO

iPad Game

︎BRIEF

We were briefed to come up with an innovative healthcare soluition.

︎TASK

To influence 4-9 year old kids into making healthy food choices in a fun and non-preachy way.

︎CHALLENGE

Childhood obesity is a huge problem growing across the world. Kids & parents are aware of healthy food choices and how it makes kids healthy. The problem is kids know healthy food is not the tastiest. We wanted to subliminally influence 4-9 year old kids into making healthy choices in a fun way, while avoiding a preachy stance. The biggest challenge for us to overcome was that 4-9 year olds are not particularly interested in making better food choices. They eat what they like.

They are also a tough audience to get through to using traditional or digital media. The influence of media constantly bombarding them with images and videos of chocolates, candies and chips etc doesn't help at all. Through research we found out that a lot of them play games on the family iPad (and other tablets) daily. We thought this was a unique opportunity to connect with them.

The message or game in our case had to be be approved by parents & teachers, so they would let the kids play it on the family iPad.

︎PROCESS

We kicked off the project with a 3-day design sprint and followed a rapid iteration process. Scrum roles were identified according to strengths and weaknesses of the team. We also used Trello and Slack for project management.

︎RESEARCH

“Globally, in 2016 the number of overweight children under the age of five was estimated to be over 41 million”

-World Health Organization

︎KEY FACTS

We researched various Food Pyramids & School Health Textbooks in Canada, USA, India & Mexico. The idea is to further develop what school kids learn at schoold about food, Die and Nutrition and further build on it in an intresting way. ︎

Over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016.
Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975.

In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults (18 years and older) were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese.

39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2016, and 13% were obese.
Most of the world's population live in countries where being overweight and obese kills more people than being underweight.

︎USER PERSONA

Jim is a 8 year-old who lives in Vancouver. He like playing video games. He is not very active at sports, as he gets tired very easily.

He loves to play iPad games with his dad, especially compeptive online video games. He particularly enjoys Slither.io; a competeive fun online game.

He is a smart kid who is holds a top 5 rank in his classes. He goes to a public school where he is not the biggest kid around. His favorite food is ice cream.

︎USER ANALYSIS

To solve the problem at hand we started with an in-depth user mapping and analysis to understand our users; their aspirations, motivations and contraints.

A day in life of our user:

In-depth User analysis and Persona mapping.

︎DEFINE

Problem

Create a Tablet game to influence 4-9 year old kids into making healthy choices in a fun and non-preachy way.

︎COMPETITION

AWESOME EATS
Food sorting mobile game
by Whole Foods kids foundation.

A fun game that can get boring after 2-3 times of play.

EAT A RAINBOW
A board game that teaches kids to eat more coulurful food te get well rounded nutrients from diet.

Schools use this game to teach kids nutrition. Its seen as a class project by kids not something they do for fun.

WHOLESOME APP
A Vitamin and MicroNutrients Tracker
A detailed heath app talking nutrition in-depth. Not catered to kids at all.

︎PLATFORM

4-9 year olds are a tough audience to reach using the traditional media.
Research showed that a lot of them play games on the family Tablet daily.
(iPad and other tablets). We thought this was a unique opportunity to connect with them.
They are also exposed to a lot of games. So for them to choose our game it has to be fun & competitive. This is the reason why we added a leaderboard and studied other games they love Eg, Slither.io

︎BACKSTORY

Alex is a young alien who has crash landed on earth. He ate some bad food, got sick & lost his ability to fly. As a player you have to feed him with healthy food so he can grow strong.

Alex needs to grow his wings and successfully fly back to his home planet where his dear mom is waiting for him.
Kids can save their highest score and compete their friends for the top score.

︎GAME DEMO

Iteration #1 of the game being teste by a 6 year old.

︎ USER INTERFACE

Designing a user interface for this game was a fun and challenging experience. I went though multiple approacheds and iterations to arrive at the final(for now) version of the UI for the game.

One of the critical elements for the game UI was the meter which the user is closely watching to make the jumps. To illustrate our UI design processes are shown here
︎

SLIDESHOW OF UI IMAGES/ Toolbar/Scorebar/ GIFs
User TestsSLIDESHOW OF IMAGES: User test video + Survey + Character Survey

The main character went through quite a few iterations till we arrived at the final version “Alex” in the game.

︎CHARACTER

The main character went through quite a few iterations till we arrived at the final version “Alex” in the game.

︎CHARACTER

The main character went through quite a few iterations till we arrived at the final version “Alex” in the game.

︎FURTHER DETAILS

Presentation Deck link ︎
Glossary, notes, links, refs

︎RETROSPECTIVE

︎WHAT WORKED
1. This was a great opptotunity to learn and design the User eXperinice of a game for kids in tablet space.
2. Learnt how to lead a team in a product owner's role in an Agile(scrum) environment.
3. Rapidly prototype and develop a tablet game for kids by continuous iteration.
4. Create and maintain game design pipeline.

︎ WHAT DID NOT
1. In future I will try to do more user tests earlier in the process of game developement.
2. Should have tried experimenting other platforms like mobile, 3d, VR or AR in one of the sprints.
3. Try to get one more developer and a 3D artist. It would have helped a lot in moving the project frurther.

︎FUTURE PLANS

• Develop few more levels (maybe two more)

Polish the intro and the tutorial video.

• User test with kids below 5 and above 10 of age to check feasibility for a wider (spillover) user audience
• To try and connect with a local school for user testing and test market analysis

I am Pushkar, an award-winning Creative, UX designer and Project manager.

I am Pushkar, an award-winning Creative,
UX designer and Project manager.