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An app that teaches Storytelling at work or school.

Client

Senior project - Centennial College

Duration

4 months

Mock-up-Naboo.png
Roles

Project manager, design lead,

UX researcher, designer and writer.

Tools

Figma, Miro, Maze, Zoom, Google Workspace

Team

2 collaborators, and 2 mentor.

Quick rundown

  • Problem overview: Young adults often lack storytelling skills, affecting personal and career growth. I devised a solution that aimed to teach these skills in a fun way through gamified methods.

  • User Research: I conducted surveys and interviews to understand user needs and desires, leading to the initial persona document and user journey.

  • Strategic Challenges: I needed to differentiate storytelling in its forms of use and hone into the space where storytelling would be used.

  • Learning and Gamification: I hatched a plan to integrate the BOPPPS learning model with gamified elements like badges and points into the application's design. This model is structured to Bridge in, offer an Outcome, Pre-assess, let the user Participate, Post-assess and Summarize the lesson to the user.

  • Prototype and Impact: The prototype effectively used the BOPPPS model and gamification, showing positive results in user testing.

The problem

Even though we understand the effects of using well-crafted storytelling at work or school, there's an evident lack of these techniques for many young adults, who don't develop or even understand them until late in their careers, impacting their personal growth, and lowering their potential ceiling.

By identifying this problem, I set out to find a solution that helps these users learn, practice and train the storytelling techniques necessary to be successful at work or school, with the caveat that it needed to implement a sturdy learning model and use gamified methods throughout.

The approach

Validating ideas and understanding the user

The first big step was to understand the potential users of the application and identify if they needed this solution and how they would experience this product better. I implemented a combo of survey questions and interviews to test my initial solution concept.

After validating the initial concept, the survey answers worked to identify some key frustrations of the people who would use this product, as well as some general understanding of how they think and behave, we move on to creating initial ideas of personas.

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Setting the right story

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At this point, one of the main strategic challenges came to be: where do I draw the line between actual storytelling and methods of applying it (i.e. creative writing)? After all, storytelling is much more than writing, but many of my interviewees and even myself made a clear correlation between the two. With that in mind, I took good care in developing the personas and their journey based on using storytelling in as many forms and methods, not just in written words.

Charting the journey ahead

Understanding the concept and having my personas, I set out to chart the next steps, taking into account clear milestones to hit due to the nature of the project. In this process, I took great detail in finding the correct model of learning that could mesh well with the gamification principles I wanted to apply to the application.

To find this learning approach, I turned to one of my instructors and one of my mentors, who both were experiences in learning methodologies, out of this consults I discovered the BOPPPS learning model which stands for: bridge in, outcome, pre-assessment, participatory learning, post-assessment and summary. With the learning model in the bag, I started building the gamification elements into it, taking inspiration from well-known apps like Duolingo and Brilliant. The key was to balance learning challenges, enough rewarding moments and providing users a thorough feeling of mastery and independence.

Putting it all together: the first wireframe

The main challenge in building the wireframe was leveraging my word-focused approach. For this, I worked with my collaborators closely, knowing they were adept in graphic design I knew our skills would mesh well. I also consulted heavily and showed my work many times to my other mentor, whose experiences in UX design I appreciated greatly. The initial wireframe, even though text-heavy showcased my concept's essence and was ready to start the user feedback iterations.

The Outcome

After rounds of user feedback, the current prototype has a strong foundation on the BOPPPS learning model, which was adapted with gamified elements like badges, points, and levels. This current iteration accounts for the levels of knowledge users might have when starting to use Naboo, onboarding them initially to know where they might need to begin their learning journey, effectively providing a fun and personalized experience, anywhere and everywhere.

The Impact

The journey hasn't finished, as this project was paused in its final design stage. However, after careful user usability testing focused on the learning model and gamification elements to provide the experience intended for the user, I can assert positively that the learning model was adopted well by the users and the gamified elements served to enhance their learning experience. You can know more details about the user tests done for this here.

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