Qeexo MyFarm Game App

Product overview

Learn to plant, water and harvest crops!

Over the course of 8 months, I was given the opportunity to design, develop and launch an app based on my idea of helping to teach children how to grow their own vegetables and care for animals in a fun way. Called My Farm: Learn & Play, the app was designed for the iPad and is fun for all ages.

A key requirement of the children’s app was to showcase Qeexo’s TouchTools machine learning touch platform in a real-life scenario. With the nature of TouchTools, the software requires hand-eye coordination and association with real world gestures. The first step of developing the app was to research the target age group and then determine which touch interactions could be successfully achieved.

Design process

Defining a creative strategy

Workflow

  1. Storyboard research
  2. Interactive flow
  3. Storyboard sketch and wireframes
  4. App look & feel (Illustration, Animation Sprites, Audio Selection)
  5. Prototype (Principle)
  6. Specification guidelines
  7. Validation (Usability testing)
  8. Marketing (iTunes App Store, Corporate website)

Storyboard Research

Child development age milestones

  • Toddlers (12 – 18 months): Ability to choose different colors to use. They express themselves in new creative and artistic ways, including being able to draw.
  • Toddlers (18 – 24 months): Showing signs of curiosity and will be looking for far more amusement than just static playing.
  • Pre School (2 years): Learning the difference between reality and fantasy, so they have amazing imaginations.
  • Pre School (3 years): Developed motor control. Interested in using levers, buttons or instructions and enjoy getting a reaction from the toy.
  • Key Stage 1 (4 years): Dramatic increase in attention span. Ability to share and play with others improves greatly.
  • Key Stage 1 (5 years): Start showing signs of wanting to learn to write.

We found that children at the age of 4+ have the cognitive and motor skill capability to interact with TouchTools. Children at the age of 4+ take an interest in apps that have a theme. We determined a theme-styled game would be the best approach compared to a strategy or puzzle style. This is because themed-style games are easier to develop, game ideation, ease of prototyping and access of target audience through friends and family.

Through a handful of themed-style concepts, it was determined a gardening game could provide an opportunity to teach fun and educational values to kids through the process of planting and growing different plants. TouchTools could be integrated into using a ruler to measure the length of a carrot or a dial to learn how to pick fruit off a tree.

Interactive flow

The app consists of four interactive stories based on the theme of garden/ farm: Pumpkin, Apples, Chicken and Horse. The kid is walked through each interactive story through short tasks ranging from digging a hole, turning on the water faucet, feeding the horse and picking apples. The interactive flow illustrates the steps between interactions and animations.

Storyboard sketch and wireframes

Creating a sketched storyboard for each major scene serves as a preliminary step to refine the design before finalization.

Illustration and character style

The illustration style chosen for the game was intended to stand out amongst the highly competitive iTunes game genre. Such as TouchTools simulating real life gestures digitally, I wanted to cross the digital divide between traditional children’s illustration books and interactive touch screens.

Animation

Animations for each character were illustrated one frame at a time and then stitched together to create a gif file. Each character animation is short in length and activated following the a completion of a task.

Implementation

Retrospective

My Farm: Learn & Play was my first opportunity to build a game app from the ground up. The entire process was exciting, rewarding, and tough. I learned how to execute a concept that was just in my head into a game that is fully functioning and available to download on the Apple iTunes App Store.

My role

Designed, developed and launched Apple iPad-based children’s game, Qeexo My Farm: Learn & Play, showcasing Qeexo’s TouchTools machine learning platform.

Visual Design: Art Director, User Interface Design, Branding, Iconography, Illustration and Animation.

Interaction Design: Wireframes, Storyboards and Information Architecture.

Year: 2018
OS: iOS

Category
Mobile Design