Scottie Go! - an AR coding adventure
Scottie Go! is an award-winning ("Toy of the Year 2019" award in Poland, "Selección SIMO INNOVA 2018" in Spain) educational game using tangible – physical – chipboard tokens (or 'tiles') to teach coding. I was part of the team who developed the concept and Lead Designer for the project. Scottie Go! first hit the shelves in 2016 and was later incubated into an independent company (BeCREO Technologies sp. z o.o.) where I stayed on as Chief Creative Officer until early 2020.
The Scottie Go! concept came about because the XXI century education system - being focused on passive observation, and learning by rote - has long failed to keep up with the current pace of development in IT sector both in terms of shortage of trained educators and lack of tools for developing foundation for future technical and IT education. One of modalities that we discussed as having potential to create such foundation was manipulating tangible objects (or using fine motor skills) to process, understand and incorporate abstract concepts.
Upon testing we discovered that from the players viewpoint putting game controls outside of the device was never a problem. Children learn naturally through exploration and play, and do not need a reason for learning how to play a fame. In adult life we maintain some of that innocence as well; we do not pay attention to the fact that our daily interactions with in-app interfaces are learning experiences that with take on in stride.
About the App
Scottie Go! relies on learning to control Scottie – the main character – which "just happens" to be equivalent to writing simple computer programs. It is an unusual setup. A lot of focus within the product had to be put on the learning curve designed by our team member and teaching methodologist, the quality of our patented AR engine and modals presenting tutorials, new concepts and providing legibility across the app and physical game components.
Although at some point we developed versions of the product dedicated to individual consumers, the core business model centred around schools and school administrative networks, which also resulted in a number of unique constraints. Target players were going to be very young (6-11 y.o.), would not be using their own devices, would often be taught by educators without formal technical training.
Our focus lied on making sure that teachers and youngest of student can find their way together between the landing screen, the world map (the main game screen you see upon selecting/creating your user profile), the mini-map (each tied to a specific location on the world map)...
... and the quest screen (where we can all find out and discuss how to help Scottie).
Once students reach the quest screen they can play like they would play any other mobile game with one exception: in order to play they would have to let go of their device, compose a code helping Scottie on their desk (or other flat surface) and only then would be able to to observe Scottie doing precisely what they asked him to do.
They would be able to draw their own conclusions and work at their own pace. They would begin to learn basic math, coding, abstract thinking and at times teamwork. We discovered that students could play well together in teams of two or three.
Designing for engagement and motivation
Key part of the design process - given the age of the target audience - was building empathy with the product and so creating a protagonist and story that could appeal to the demographic of 6 to 11 year olds of both sexes.
We began with a loose narrative that could offer a frame to actions and interactions required by our teaching scenarios and begun to brain storm ideas for a main character. We iterated through a series of proposals and ran surveys on groups of students at variety of ages. We measured their preferences based on age and gender.
Our goal was to establish a singular empathetic character purposely stripped of typical male/female characteristics that would lean towards youngest students while remaining acceptable to early teens. At some point during the process we begun working towards a large eyed potato style character. The reason being, clearly visible eyes and smile helped youngest players engage with the protagonist and some of them could potentially be working on small devices – mobiles phones.
As we were homing on possible "winners", the narrative of story was converging as well. We went after a simple altruistic trope of helping a friendly alien who ran into trouble at a lower earth orbit. Scattered parts of its spacecraft could be acquired by helping Scottie solve quests (and make friends) all around the world.
Another aspect of maintaining engagement with the product was distinguishing and favouring well written code without stymieing players creativity or outright punishing lack of interest in "finding the right solution".
Scottie Go! engine is a sandbox and Scottie will carry out any properly composed code whether it solves the quest or does not. Upon solving a quest user can be awarded from one to three stars. While just solving the quest is sufficient to move on it the game, getting stars can only be achieved by using required coding tiles and writing shortest codes possible.
A noteworthy pitfall to avoid in Scottie Go! was handling 179 coding tiles at once (this is precisely the amount in the flagship version of the product) introduced lots of chaos.
We color-coded distinct types of tiles into easily understandable clusters, took into account the order at which they became part of the players' "vocabulary as the game progressed and designed an organizer that made tiles manageable
Lessons learnt
I am very grateful I could contribute to the Scottie Go! family of products. It was a very complex process with a number of contributors and a source of many other "firsts"; among them, for example, an opportunity to design for vacuum forming and later to build and manage production chains once the company was off the ground.
It was a unique opportunity to merge UX, Product and Game design into a unified challenge where game protagonist's characteristics and in-game assets' attributes were result of technical, ergonomic and educational requirements.
The project had to account for needs of a broad user base - students, teachers, superintendents, parents and had a unique set of constraints on game mechanics. Finally, Scottie Go! was incubated into a fully-fledged company.
I believe it is important to state that whereas I was responsible for putting much of the project together in the shape and form it assumed, most of the visual assets used in the project were drawn by at least one of a very talented group of artist/2D designers: Gabriel Adamiak (animation), Mateusz Barancewicz, Ludwika Hawryszuk and Piotr Sołoducha.