Research

We began this project with some preliminary and secondary research to uncover the reasons why people cheat when using their fitness trackers. Then, we looked into the what it would take to create a gamified solution for this project, discovering what draws users to play video games and how to create an effective gamified experience.

Through this, we found that cash prizes were a big incentive for cheating with fitness trackers, and that people cheat in multiplayer video games to gain an advantage over others, or because they do not feel skilled enough to play the game normally.

However, we also learned that people play video games because they like to set and accomplish goals, and would rather their efforts be based on efforts rather than luck. Teens specifically like games because they can play with their friends and that it provides escapism.

Interviews

Through our interviews, we wanted to discover the reasons behind cheating and why people are inclined to track their steps in the first place. Since we had yet to decide on our user group, we interviewed both older and younger individuals to gauge the difference in mindset.

Through these interviews, we discovered that the other user group did not really need to have further extrinsic motivation to track their steps accurately, since their main goal is to improve themselves rather than win any sort of competition or gain a reward. This made us turn to our college-aged interviewees and found that they were more in need of this external motivation. This informed our decision to choose college students as the target audience for our app and create a gamified experience for them to interact with on campus.

Sketching

After deciding on our user group and concept, we wanted to ideate our fun and interactive game that also had players exercising. Our sketches display the initial UI ideas for our app drawn by Cayla Compton.

These sketches display our concepts for our game. The user would engage in mini-games that, when completed, would reward them with an item from a randomized pool which they could use to decorate their character or island. These mini-games would involve the user going outside and interacting with their campus or other players in some way, meaning they cannot cheat by just shaking their device.

The app also tracks weekly and monthly steps and will expand the island when reaching certain goals. However, having a large island is useless without having  items to decorate it, meaning each aspect of the game connects to each other.

High-Fidelity Prototyping

After sketching, I began prototyping the screens for hi-fi's. Throughout this time, our team fleshed out ideas for mini-games and concepts that would keep users coming back. All assets were drawn by Cayla Compton, and I was the sole designer of the the screens and interactions.

These pages can be seen more in-depth in the demonstration video at the top of this page.

This prototype shows the fleshed-out concepts of two of the three games, as well as the rewards from the the games and the user adding them to their island.

Limitations

Lack of Final Solution Testing

Because of the limited time in this project, our team was only able to showcase our project to some of our past interview participants and then to the class. While we received some good feedback and things to iterate on from those, we did not have time to execute those ideas.

Concept Validation

While we certainly did do research on how to best create a game like this, we cannot be certain until we test we users that the measures we put in place to prevent cheating are effective. Users may have ways to circumvent those measures that we did not consider.

My Reflection

This was my first project as the sole UX designer which was a very rewarding experience as it taught me how to work with those who are not experts in my field and forced me to be far more comfortable with Figma as I was the only one that created anything with the prototypes. It also taught me a lot about the importance of validating our design decisions, since we cannot gain anything from the design if there is no data to back up those choices. However, I am still very proud of the work I was able to accomplish in such a short amount of time.