Dr. Panda Games

What I learned

Dr Panda Plus: Home Designer
When the Design Lead asked if I wanted to spearhead an augmented reality project, knowing my experimental background, I leapt at the chance to do so. From talks with the Design Lead and the COO about their own ideas and existing apps, I picked on the idea that I know would bear the most fruit. A digital dollhouse app. It was about taking an existing experience and making it more magical and engaging, which in turn gives the children more chance to learn and practice physical and cognitive skills. 

From the idea, I expanded it into a proper concept. I worked out and focused on three core player groups: Those who currently only have access to the app, Those who currently only have access the physical product, and Those who currently have access to both. Ultimately, I wanted to make sure that both the app and the physical product were able to be used on their own. This is not only to allow parents and children to get an understanding of the full experience before buying, but also to ensure that some part of the product was always able to be used.

After all, this is about augmenting reality not replacing it.

Often augmented reality apps are about mediating the physical world with a digital interface but that places digital play over physical play. Why would I do that when I can create an experience that ensures both physical and digital play supporting each other? Digital rules are codified and immutable by players. Physical play are only goverened by social constructs which players can modify to ensure that the play is suited for them. By having both at a level playing field, my product becomes immeasurably more accessible to the situation. Whether it's three 5-year olds playing together at a nursery, a parent/carer helping a 3 year old play at home, or even an 8 year old playing by herself as she's in a plane, the product can just be used partially or as a whole, depending on what they want to do. And this is without talking about how much this also helps physically or cognitively disabled children with playing with the product.

From this mindset, I prototyped several different physical designs, from foam block puzzles/figures to the drawable flashcards which were chosen and presented them to the COO. She gave me a team of three programmers and four artists and I took charge of designing and leading the production team with oversight from the COO and the Design Lead. With the expressed idea that the app could break some of the existing Dr. Panda games' structural rules to ensure that learning was done in a clearer way and a rather wide target audience of 3-8 year olds (with English speaking parents), I designed two modes of play: a learning-based 'Quest Mode' for young children and supervised play and a creative-based 'Free Mode' for older children to practice higher cognitive skills such as storytelling and ideational thinking.

At the end, the project was handed over the COO to complete logistical pipeline of the physical product. After about a year, the product is finally released and I am pleased to see that all of my core design choices was kept intact for both the app and the physical product. It's honestly one of my proudest work and I was incredibly pleased to read this review from an Occupational Therapist at playful-living.com* who understood the design work behind it and sung praises for it.

*Unfortunately, playful-living.com shuttered at around early 2020. The link now goes to a words-only snapshot of the review kept by the Internet Archive.

General
It might not surprise anyone, but turns out children are a highly different audience than adults. What I found fascinating however was the way that kids confronted technology and just how different their mental model of the world is compared to an adult's. 

I took a dual approach with the audience, opting to use academic papers such as Jean Piaget's research and Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning when figuring out broad swathes and using live playtesting experience when working on minor details. 

The most interesting takeaways were:
A) How young children have this working semiotic knowledge of phones and apps and how to interact with them. Since our games used no language, we have to work hard on creating experiences that are intuitive for anyone around the world and we relied on the semiotic language of the phone interface.  Skeuomorphic design was king when adults were learning what computer interfaces are and is still king for kids that are going through the same experience.

B) Just how much making apps for kids clarified how liminal 'Play' is and how Play only exists when a player engages with the game. One of my most memorable moments was when I was making levels for Dr. Panda School (a dollhouse app) had to clearly explain to an artist who was just trying to do her job and make everything look nice why I have put an egg on the floor of the kitchen within the game. Making things be nice and orderly didn't attract kids to engage with it. Putting something out of place forces a kid to grasp that "The egg is not meant to be there" and begin play with the egg by putting it away or creating a story for why it's on the floor or simply laughing at the egg being on the floor!

Additional Information

The following is a small gallery of the games that I worked on with a small description of what they are and what I did.