Case description
Combine is a digital consult- and development bureau, who are experts in business development with core competencies in e-commerce, booking solutions, implementation and development of mobile apps.
Combine gave us a task of combining Education and Entertainment and develop a scalable concept which could be implemented to their package of app-solutions offered to their customers. The group of customers contains e.g. The National Parks in Denmark (e.g. Thy, Mols Bjerge…), Skallerup SeaSide Resort and VisitDenmark.
Members of the team
Christian Dahl (Interactive Digital Media)
Catja Agnstoft (Interactive Digital Media)
Benedikt Zaleha (Entrepreneurial Engineering)
Áron Fekete (Entrepreneurial Engineering)
Henriette Lykke Sørensen (Experience Design)
The design process
The whole process started on the first day of U-crAc workshop. The group consists of people from different study programs and therefore we spent our first day getting to know each other. Then later on that day we were presented to the case partners and the case itself. After meeting the company behind the case and getting familiar with the task, we went out into the field and collected data. We have done three different data collections. An interview with a gamification expert, an interview with Bo Bredahl, the project manager of National Park Thy, and trying the product in the actual environment of National Park Thy, firsthand. The data helped us later on in the innovation phase to come up with ideas and find our way of focus. The innovation phase consisted of Innovation Tracks with several criteria numbered by importance. Later on, we had a second meeting with the company where we presented our Innovation Tracks and they gave us feedback, where they saw potential and which direction we should focus on. Afterwards we had lectures about creating video sketches in Adobe Premiere Pro. We made short video sketches relating to our Innovation Tracks and the different Quality Criteria. After analyzing them we have chosen the idea of our final video.
Data collection
Due to our partner showing interest in Edutainment, the concept of Gamification fit what we thought Edutainment was. To further develop our understanding of Gamification we talked to PhD student Rameshnath Krishnasamy who was writing about Gamification. We considered him an expert in the field and we asked him about how Gamification is currently utilized and how it could be utilized in our case.
He told us that the current uses of Gamification are broad. Many corporate training programs utilize Gamification to incentivize the workers to do a good job. Furthermore, Gamification can also be seen in a lot of exercise applications. He highlighted the Zombies, Run! application as a good example of how to utilize Gamification.
To be able to create a Gamification feature we would have to identify in what way the users of the application would prefer their Gamification. The expert highlighted two books on gaming that could help us towards that goal. Within the books we found mentions of the theory of Richard Bartle identifying four main player types. We utilized these player types to develop further concepts.
For part of our fieldwork we went to National Park Thy to interview the project manager of the park and customer of GeoGuide, Bo Bredahl. We decided to interview Bo because he, as a customer, could give us a perspective of how the app was operating in a real-life environment. Through the interview he gave us a lot of knowledge on what kind of visitors they have at the park and what he thinks was missing or could be improved within the app. He mentioned that he would like specific content for different target groups, possibly determined by age.
During our visit to National Park Thy, we experienced a nice trip, but we also found problems in connection to the application. According to our knowledge these problems are on the side of Thy, and not Combine. We found out that the GPS location works accurately, although there are lot of important and useful information missing from the application.
Ideation phase
After a lot of Sandboxing, Brainstorming, Affinity Diagramming and picking each other’s brains, we came up with 5 different Innovation Tracks.
- Exploring – “Enabling people to find their inner child”
- Eco-system – “Enabling people to see the connections”
- Observation/Nature/Time – “Enabling people to disconnect”
- Reward/Playing/Time – “Motivating people to “reconnect” (with the game)”
- Community – “Enabling people to connect over mutual interest and shared ideas”
All of these were generated from the research and the methodical work, done during the time of the project. After narrowing all of them down to Innovation Tracks we worked with different Quality Criteria in the model provided by Rosenstand and Vistisen (2017). Prioritizing quality criteria gave us a better understanding of the different Innovation Tracks – how to work with them and how to present them to our case partner, Combine.
During the presentation Combine noted some keywords/Innovation Tracks they wanted us to go more in depth with, which has led to our final concept video.
Innovation track 1
The main Quality Criteria for this Innovation Track is, to always make it possible for the user to find their inner child – no matter their age. To make the use of the app playful and entertaining, but still educating and intriguing. In this video the focus has been an explorable map where you can see that there is something to explore, but not what it is.
In the same Innovation Track the main Quality Criteria is used more literal. In this video we are trying to communicate directly to the child in you with a virtual pet. The user will have to find an animal in real life and scan it with their camera on their phone. This way they will get the animal in their herd in the app. Here they have to take care of it by feeding it, playing with it and playing in a “gamecenter” where they can achieve points to buy more food for the pet, so that it won’t die.
Innovation track 2
The main Quality Criteria for this Innovation Track is for the user to reach some level of Mindfulness. In the video we try to motivate the user to go into nature alone or with friends to learn about nature, forget time, and discover themselves.
Innovation track 3
The main Quality Criteria for this Innovation Track is being Sociable. The concept behind the video is to enable the user to compete with, or against each other in the app. This is done by joining parties of the user’s real-life friends that have the app or randomly in the app against others all over the country or preferably, the world.
Due to a time-dogma behind this video we don’t see the *connecting with friends* part, but that is the thought behind the video.
Concept video
In our final concept video we try to showcase a combination of the three Innovation Tracks, Exploring, Observation/Nature/Time, and Community. Specifically we want to show our version of the unexplored map and the quest feature as well as being able to join your friends in a collaborative or competitive adventure. As the user explores the map, new points are revealed and some of those points contain a quest that needs to be completed (i.e. scanning different plants) in order to get points and achievements. The user can choose to share this quest with friends to make it more sociable or if they want, they can do the quest on their own.