Sonare

A Mobile Application

This is a data collection app which the participants will install on their smartphones. It will help network researchers study and gather data on social interactions between different participants during the 2020 IGEM competition; Specifically, it will help study how their physical interaction influences their performance as a team.

  • Date: Decembre 2019 - March2020
  • Role:UI Designer, Game designer, Illustrateur
  • Missions: Wireframing, Prototyping, UI design, Illustration
  • Team: 1 PO, 3 Researchers(Data Network, Sociology), 1 UX, 1 UI/Game designer, 1 developpeur, 1 research Engineer

Problem Statement

Science students from all over the world participate every year in IGEM competetion. The research team contacted me to find a way to onboard maximum number of teams on the application and add fun to their laborious"task" of daily journaling in the application.
I was asked to find a solution that would tempt them to connect everyday and keep their blue tooth on for maximum number of hours per day.

Project Goal

    I was contacted to make a gamification strategy for the following 3 objectives :
  1. Onboarding: maximum number of teams on the app
  2. Onboarding: maximum members of each team on the app
  3. Daily Motivation: engage maximum participants in the team during 6 months so that they regularly journal their activities by filling forms (2-3 questions per day). The questions ill be related to:
    - their actual contribution to the ongoing project
    - their interactions with fellow participants (intra and inter team).
  4. Motivate them to fill out the long survey form every 3 months

Key Focus area

  1. Unbiased Data Collection- The gamification strategy was simplified because as the application was used for data collection on users behaviour in IGEM competition. The behaviour of the players could not be influenced.
  2. Low Cognitive burden- No added cognitive burden could happen through the gamefication. It had to be less than 2 minutes as preparing for the IGEM competition took most of the player's time
  3. Offer Minimum Distraction- The essential part of the application was journaling , daily and 3 monthly. Gamification is added inorder to make the the task "fun". However, it could not distract them from not doing the main task.

sketches sonar gamification

Individual Activity Loop

sketches sonar gamification

3 Monthly Survey Activity Loop

    Story telling for gamification

    It was very important for me to create a dialogue between the players and the application. We were asking for a daily 6 months engagement.
  1. Marketing strategy- John Campbell's Hero's Journey. The parallel between IGEM participants on a synthetic biology tournament is quite like an adventure trip. With it's pitfalls, loyal companionship, hard labor, deception, frustration, encouragement etc. So, in the flyers I used an epic story for onboarding maximum number of teams.
  2. Tin Man (Wizard of Oz)- As a kid I loved Dorothy's story, along her adventure she met many characters namely Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man. I specially loved the Tin Man because it was the most loyal and tender campanion. I think without him, she would have not have suceeded like SamwiseGamgee for Frodo Baggins.
    In the app it is represented by the Robot, who has a dual role of helping players with onboarding, sending notifications,"listening to their problems" through journaling (data collection) and to send them analytics about their team dynamics and player's soft skill set. It's the mascot of the application, it represents the research team.
  3. Pets- During their adventure, each time they finish a milestone, they will meet a new campanion. It's a reward for their assiduity on the app.

tinman

Mascot inspired from Tin Man (Wizard of Oz)

Gamification - Design of some of the Pets players can unlock

sketches sonar gamification
sketches sonar gamification
sketches sonar gamification
sketches sonar gamification
all sonar pets

UI design - WIREFRAMES

sonar wireframes

First draft of wireframes to give Sonar team an overview of onboarding and gamification screens.The wireframes(some of them are shown above) were build in XD and XD plugin was used for the images. Placing place holder images was important for the research team to get a better understanding of the gamification strategy and integration of pets in the whole story telling of the application.

Graphic Design Guideline

graphic_design

Illustrations for the screens

illustrations sonar screens

The Screens in the application

sonar onboarding screens

Onboarding Screens

sonar survey screens

Few Survey Screens (UX designer Romain Delory)

sonar activities screens

Few Adding Activities Screens (UX designer Romain Delory)

sonar signup screens

SignUp Screens

  • Sponsor : CRI