Cool School
August 2020 - May 2021
TL;DR
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Cool School is a learning-based animated game to help kids between 4 and 7 years of age acquire conflict resolution skills. Using the insights gathered from 5 Participatory Design sessions, our team redesigned the experience within the game.
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Some of the improvements include:
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Balancing intrinsic and extrinsic rewards within the game.
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Introducing exploration within the game environment.
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An improved conflict resolution mechanic.
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A playful and inclusive environment with the ability to choose and customize characters that kids love.
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My Role: UX Research, participant recruitment, leading participatory design sessions, running play-testing sessions, creating UI concepts and hi-fidelity prototype
Skills: UX Design, User Research, Problem Solving, Interaction Design
Overview
Cool-School was conceived in the early 2000s to teach kids about conflicts in school premises and the ways to resolve them. Originally a flash-based game, Cool-School became a popular resource among school teachers who commonly integrated the game into their curriculum.
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However, with time, the application struggled to scale alongside the hyper-growth of technology and renewed perception of learning-based games among the younger kids. Infrastructure was challenged. Content became outdated. The underlying source of conflict and method of conflict resolution became relatively obsolete.
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Cool School wasn't so cool anymore.
The challenge
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ReDESIGN the EXPERIENCE in 10 months
Our goal for the project was to recapture the magic of the early days of Cool School. The original premise was simple: solve conflicts, collect alphabets. However, we weren't trying to revert to a simple past. Our ambitions were to create a strong foundation that embraced a rapidly evolving perception towards the learning-based game and a more diverse user base.
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Our high-level goals were to:
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Modernize Cool School, bringing its design up to date
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Create a scalable design to accommodate rapidly evolving child developmental psychology
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Create an inclusive and accessible design
Step 0: Gathering initial data
To know what is missing from the Cool-School game, we ran a play-testing session with kids. Some of our research questions addressed the following themes:
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Perception of a conflict and its resolution: Do kids understand what a conflict is?
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The perceived value of rewards and motivation: How does reward impact the experience within the game and the motivation to play the game?
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Aesthetics: Does the interactivity and aesthetics within the game evoke a positive response from kids?
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Gameplay mechanics: Are the game mechanics engaging for kids?
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Accessibility and inclusion: Is the game accessible and the content inclusive?
Background research
With the help of Dr. Melanie Killen, who is a child developmental psychologist at UMD, we conducted background research and literature review. This led us to develop 7 key themes and further helped us gain a better understanding of child psychology in relation to conflicts and learning based-games.
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Below are some of the themes and excerpts:
Personas
We were conducting research at the height of the pandemic and recruiting participants was challenging. Therefore, we decided to build lightweight personas that we can look to whenever we are stuck in the process.
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Three personas were developed keeping childhood needs, developmental, and learning needs in consideration.
Choosing the right method
Unlike other research methods, the participatory design brought us very specific findings of kids' engagement with the game, motivation to play, and understanding conflict resolution.
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The participatory design offered a few distinctive advantages:
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Results meet needs: With kids invested in the design process, we understood their needs that guided Cool School's experience.
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Fun and exciting: kids enjoy playing video games and the session provided them an opportunity to experience something on a Saturday afternoon.
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Sharing ideas and stories: We listened to some of the amazing stories about how the kids solve conflicts and it certainly gave us an opportunity to understand their mental model.
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Within participatory design we used four different techniques:
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Sticky-note critiquing
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Layered Elaboration
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Bags of stuff or Low-tech prototyping
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Interviews
We started by mapping out each research question to the technique(s) that would be best suitable to answer it:
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Perception of a conflict and its resolution required an individual understanding of the kid's perception of conflicts in a given environment be it school or home. We informed this by conducting informal interviews with kids during participatory design sessions. We captured video materials that generated user empathy and provided concrete examples of situations that are perceived as conflicts by a kid.
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The perceived value of the rewards and motivation were informed via sticky-note critiquing and informal interviews with kids choosing the rewards and sharing examples of games that motivated them to play.
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Aesthetics was better informed via a sticky-note critique approach where kids were given a bunch of visuals and were asked to tag them based on their like and dislike.
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Gameplay mechanics were informed via layered elaboration technique where kids were given a problem and asked to annotate on designs in layers.
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Inclusion was informed via low-tech prototyping where kids were given bags of stuff and were asked to create characters that they connected with.
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how we designed participatory design
Part one focused on forming a question of the day that helps everyone to think about the content area of the session before the design activity.
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Example questions:
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We want to know about a time when you got upset with someone. It could be at school or at home. What happened? Why were you upset?
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What is your favorite game? and Why?
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Would you rather get 5 dollars or a thank you card?
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Part two focused on design activity.
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Example prompts:
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Share a story of someone you know who faced a problem and how did s/he solved it? Can you draw the situation?
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What is your favorite reward for accomplishing or finishing a task in-game or in real life?
Insights from participatory design sessions
Personalized experience
In the original game, players couldn't choose in-game avatars. By bringing avatars into the game, kids could express themselves. Additionally, we added avatar customization to allow more self-expression.
Insights
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Kids loved customizing avatars.
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Kids gravitated towards inanimate avatars, for example, a monster or a pencil.
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Kids connected with happy-looking avatars, not angry monsters!
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Kids wanted to name their avatars.
Design
Using inanimate characters was a crucial decision in making the game inclusive as it eliminated the possibility of cultural appropriation.
Kids love exploration
Space, exploration, and a sense of adventure are integral to a game experience, and it is no coincidence that kids love exploration. The original game lacked the concept of exploration and instead asked a player to solve a conflict. By adding exploration, not only did we provide a sense of anticipation but also an engaging game experience.
Insights
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Kids preferred a 3-quarter view instead of an isometric view.
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They wanted the environment to be representative of an actual school.
Game environment
conflict resolution mechanic
One of the insights that emerged from our initial playtesting session was that kids didn't understand what a conflict is. While most of the conflict scenarios were pre-developed by social developmental psychologists, we wanted to understand how the kids solved a conflict.
Insights
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Kids would love to resolve conflicts with spells to make the bullies nicer.
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Find an adult to solve it for them.
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A kid mentioned that the consequences of bullying should be working at McDonald's.
Mission-driven conflict resolution
While kids could preview a conflict scenario in the original game, kids weren't excited to solve them. There wasn't a hunt for an outcome. To create a more profound and more engaging experience we decided to make a mission-driven conflict resolution.
Guided path to conflict
Taking help from a bystander
We explored possible learning opportunities from an active bystander
balancing intrinsic and extrinsic Rewards
One of the biggest challenges we faced was balancing extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. While extrinsic rewards are exciting and motivating, it is known from previous research that kids eventually lose interest in educational games. To obtain a learning outcome, it was imperative to find the right balance between learning and engagement.
Buying accessories for avatar using in-game currency - extrinsic reward
Players receive coins as rewards for solving a conflict and they can spend the coins to buy accessories for their avatar from the in-game shop.
Unlocking new parts of cool school through keys - extrinsic reward
Receiving badges - intrinsic reward
Giving back to the community - intrinsic reward
We added the opportunity to earn a playground item that can be placed on the map to give to the community. This way, we can expose children to the innate reward of contributing to a community.
