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Independent Project- Week 32

 


Semester B: Week 32
Student: Tai Ser Yeet (22064351)
Programme: BA (Hons) Digital Media Design
Task: Week 32's Class Task


WEEK 32

Redefining the Target Audience

Current Problem
  • It is hard to get pre-school children to do user testing
  • Children will most likely need parental supervision when using devices such as tablets or smartphones
  • How else are they going to discover the app on their own if someone is controlling the usage of the devices?
  • Pre-school students are not going to care about climate change or saving the oysters. It is mainly adults or environmental advocates who think it is necessary to educate the younger generation during their critical development years.
  • Indeed, the app is specifically designed for kids, but without the agent to introduce the product to them, how will they ever know of its existence?
Research to Counter-Argue the Problem
  • “Parents choose which applications to spend money on and download for younger children, but older children may have a greater say in such decisions.” - Medium
  • In other words, parents with younger kids have more control over the type of app or content they can consume compared to parents with older children.
Alternative Scenario
  • Change target audience to children ages 9–12 years old, parents, and educators
  • 9–12 years old: They are more capable of understanding complex terms and concepts. They also require less parental supervision, which puts less emphasis on heavily designing for parents as well.
  • Parents: Although older children are playing with the app now, parents or legal guardians still need to monitor the app’s safety and addictiveness.
  • Educators: These groups of people are considered one of the primary disseminators of the app. According to the article above, “From checking a child’s progress to conducting classes online, the ed-tech space has evolved very rapidly, and products need to cater to the needs of any educator for them to be successful in the market.”
  • From the image above, we can deduce that the goals of parents and educators overlap considerably more.
Literacy Level of Various Age Range


Summary: 6-8 years old: can read but limited. UI needs to be very simple.





Summary: 9–12 years old: skilled at using touch screens and have problem-solving skills.


Google's Definition of Apps Catered to Different Age Groups

Link to the Webpage

Link to the Webpage

It is important to keep in mind that a slight mistake in content designed for the wrong age can be spotted by children immediately. To them, even a one-year age gap means a lot as the majority of children desire to be seen as an adult, capable of making their own decisions.
Link to Webpage


Finalised Target Audience for the Onica App

The final target audience will be 9-11-year-olds, parents, and educators.



Feedback from Steve
  • Start emailing your potential target audience now if you want to recruit them for user testing
  • The change of target audience to 9-11-year-olds, parents, and educators is a good move 
  • You can add a feature where you can choose whether you want to enter into an interface catered to parents, educators, and kids. 

Feedback from Josh
  • You can get the 3D base structure of the oyster shell from SketchFab and then create the other organs yourself in a low poly state
  • The details can be added on as material so that you don't have to spend time doing all the little crevices and canals in the actual 3d object
  • As long as you create the whole app interface design, coding in Unity as well as some assets in Blender, you should be good
  • Try to find the material of the oyster on Google, just search for "oyster material"
  • If you see that the 3D model has a lot of vertices and faces, that means it is a high poly model and will be very hard to modify so do not download the design.
  • Try Sketchfab and Free3D software for free 3d assets

References 

Deb, C. (2022). Designing for Kids: Know your target audience. [online] Ed-Tech Talks. Available at: https://medium.com/ed-tech-talks/designing-for-kids-know-your-target-audience-19fce8f24ee4.

Sherwin, K. and Nielsen, J. (2019). Children’s UX: Usability Issues in Designing for Young People. [online] Nielsen Norman Group. Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/childrens-websites-usability-issues/.

support.google.com. (n.d.). Manage target audience and app content settings - Play Console Help. [online] Available at: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9867159?hl=en-GB#zippy=%2Cages [Accessed 12 May 2024].

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