Little Wing App
Game design / Responsive design / User research / Interface design
Project Overview
This was a project during my degree at IXD Belfast working with a real client.
Little Wing, the pizzeria, wanted to work with us and provide the opportunity to have a mobile game app designed by us be rolled out to stores.
The Brief
Little Wing wanted to provide a fun experience for their hungry customers while they waited for their orders to arrive to the table. They wanted a game app, compatible for mobile and tablet that customers could download and play to pass the time.
The brief was pretty open, it just had to be within the Little Wing brand, and obviously have a pizza based theme.
Personas (don't judge the tacky design I was 1st year)
Game Concept
Research
First I had to understand the target market for the game, this involved communication with the client and online research, From this information I created a range of personas to base ideas on. As Little Wing's market includes families with ages ranging from children to elderly and the small window to introduce the game from order to dinner on the table, it was clear the game has to be simple, but effective.
As the brief of this project was very open, I decided to research popular game concepts. I wanted something that was simple, but addictive. It was around this time that Candy Crush and Angry Birds were hot on the market, a simple game that left people wanting to play it every chance they got. Having a game that was addictive to play could potentially increase the number of customers and revenue for the client.
From the competitor research I began to sketch ideas, and then created a quick concept using Invision.
Bringing the game to life
Prototyping & Character design
From my initial concept in the form of a quick prototype on Invision, I started to build on the idea, considering the user flow from start to finish. How do they get the app? Do they have to log in? How do we onboard them of gameplay? etc. I iterated on the first prototype, using friends and family to test interactions and behaviours, considering as a user, did the app respond how they thought it would? was it intuitive or difficult to navigate? From these observations and conversations I was able to iterate further.
Once the flow of the app and game was in a good place I was able to focus on the characters. The idea was for users to match three pizza toppings in a row to earn points, and if they matched pizzas they got bonus points that had the potential to earn rewards such as a free meal.
I sketched the characters by hand and then used Sketch App to bring the ideas to life. Early concepts had a thick border around them, but with feedback it was agreed the characters looked much better without the thick stroke!
Early character iteration vs final
The proposal
Selling the game
We were asked to create a PDF proposal document to share with the client. The top three ideas had the opportunity to present their game concept to a number of stakeholders. Unfortunately, my proposal didn't make it to the final cut, however, I was happy with the product I had produced and the efforts I had made to make it a fun, engaging experience.
