Week 20+21: Gamification Challenge

The past two weeks have been dedicated to testing the gamification. We wanted to test it thoroughly and to determine whether it should be kept in the app or deleted altogether.

So, We built an interactive flow of the gamification and did another user testing. In the tests, we tested whether the users liked the idea of gamification and how their hands and eyes moved while using the application. We wanted to look at their expressions.

We did a user test for 4 users that match our persona. First of all, it turned out that the app was perceived as a 'couples space' by the users. It was a challenge for us throughout the semester and we did not know how to convey the feeling of “couple space” to our users, but after updating the app’s screen, in the last two user tests and in this one it turned out that users do feel it. This is a really beautiful achievement for us; "By using this platform, you can communicate with your partner, but you can also communicate with a wink - all kinds of cute things that make your partner happy/smile" (User 1.)

Moreover, due to the user test it was found that in the scheduling page, the icon of the clock isn’t clear and unfamiliar to the users. The purpose of this icon is telling the user that he scheduled a gesture on this day.

In addition, the purpose of the gamification objects was not clear to users. One user suggested to us that instead of displaying a collection of objects, we should offer to show the progress that the couple is making together.

However, users do like the idea that we offer them ideas for joint activities. In conclusion, 2 users from 3 said that a gamification feature is 'cute' but not necessary for our app. Our challenge for next week is to decide whether we want to leave it in the app or not. A final insight from the test is that the wink button should look more 'like a button'.

At the same time we started working on designing and building the scenes for the movie script. The lecturer suggested that we try to work on Powtoon or Animaker app. We tried to work on both programs to see what was more suitable for us, but in the end decided to work on Animaker. It was really challenging because it's a new program for us and we hadn’t learned about it yet, so we started learning from scratch, self-learning through YouTube videos.

Our way was to design all the scenes through pictures and after that we’ll start editing the video and the animation.

So far we have built 5 scenes. We stopped working in the sixth scene because we didn’t know how to design it so we are waiting to consult with our lecturers. But we believe that in the end anything is possible :)

Some of the scenes we built:

On the development side:

The last 2 weeks were amazing! I made great process and finished the biggest parts of the final MVP app. You can see the progress I made using these slides: *the blue is ready and yellow is yet be to made.

After I worked hard on the last few back-end goals I implemented 99% of the UI as well. Now finally the app starts to look like it should!

EXCITING!