Baker’s Quest: A Gamified Learning App
Working with four fellow classmates, my team and I developed a gamified baking app called Baker's Quest. In Baker's Quest users learn recipes through guided instruction which earns them coins, experience points, and rewards.
App Idea: Learn new baking skills through a gamified app
Approach: Goal-Directed Design
Duration: 12 weeks (Spring 2023)
Tools: Figma, Figjam, Illustrator, Discord
Role: UX researcher, UI designer
Team Size: 5
Goals: -Improve upon the recipe app format by giving users more guided and detailed instruction
-Provide a new experience which other recipe apps lacked, gamified learning
Introduction
In my Interaction Design I course; my classmates and I were tasked with developing a mobile app using Alan Cooper's user-first method of Goal-Directed Design (GDD).
Over the semester my teammates Sydney (lead), Laura, Sarah, Kaila, and I developed an app entitled Baker's Quest. Baker's Quest is a baking recipe app in which users become an apprentice of Pastry Pete, a master pastry chef. Through the guidance of Pastry Pete, users bake with easy follow-along instructions to earn coins, rank up, and unlock new recipes.
We wanted to take a more educational approach towards a recipe app. We wanted an app that could help guide bakers through various questions and difficulties in the kitchen while baking. For example, what's the difference between bread flour and all-purpose? How do I know when this cake is done? With the help of Baker's Quest, users can put their worries to ease and have fun as they bake alongside Pastry Pete through step-by-step instruction.
Research Phase
Method: Goal-Directed Design
In order to gain an understanding of Goal-Directed Design our class referred to Alan Cooper's book About Face as a guide. Cooper describes GDD as a 'behavior-oriented design' approach that aims to understand user's goals, needs, and motivations (13). Goal-Directed Design aims to bridge the gap between research results and design solutions (21). About Face breaks down the entire GDD process step-by-step, explaining the importance of each phase.
There are six phases in GDD: research, modeling, requirements, framework, refinement, and support. However, phases have been slightly modified and/or combined to best fit the scope of the course.
In the research phase we gathered qualitative data through user interviews, affinity mapping, competitive audits, and literature reviews. Qualitative data helps us as designers identify common patterns of behavior among user types. And with this data, design choices become more credible and intentional, because they can be traced back to research data.
Overview & Kick-Off Meeting
To commence the research phase, we held a kick-off meeting. Due to this being a school project we were unable to hold a real kick-off with company stakeholders, so instead the team took the role of company stakeholder. The team identified the problem with the current state of recipe apps.
Problem Statement: "The current state of recipe apps, specifically baking apps, have focused primarily on instruction without providing extra incentives for learning. What existing products/services fail to address is engaging their users with guided learning practices and game-like challenges."
After we explored constraints, scope, user perceptions, budget, feasibility, viability etc. in our kick-off, we could begin our research.
Literature Review
To familiarize ourselves with the product domain, our team reviewed a variety of literature on baking, gamification, and learning. We used this literature to develop key questions for our research.
There were 3 questions we asked ourselves:
1. How does baking fit into a person's everyday life?
2. What is gamification, and how can it be used to enhance user engagement?
3. How do you cater towards different learning styles when teaching?
Key Findings
Upon further research we were able to answer these three questions. We now had more clarity on which direction the app should take. In addition, these findings aided us in crafting relevant and poignant user interview questions. Our key findings are as follows:
Baking serves as a creative and often therapeutic hobby.
Gamification is a strong tool to increase user motivation by combining emotional engagement through story and intrinsic/extrinsic rewards.
Intrinsic rewards, like personal growth or mastering a new skill, are more impactful to users.
There are three elements of motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose (Burke, 2014).