Case study
Retro-epic
RetroEpic Software is a game development studio based in Cape Town, South Africa that was founded in 2007. They have been in the business of making games for a long time
Time frame
4 weeks
My role
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Research
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UX
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Prototyping
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Client facing
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Pen & paper
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Sketch
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Axure
Tools
The challenge
Retro-epic built an educational game with the main purpose of simplifying the complex world of saving and investment for users from a low income market. Deloitte was enlisted to heuristically assess the game, along with creating simplified, digestable content on insurance policies and jargon, while keeping within the legal parameters of not giving advice about insurance online
High-level Goals
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Understanding how people feel about saving and investing (Bias and pre-existing feelings)
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Understanding the current level of understanding about insurance policies
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Using gamification and education to create user engagement
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Creating simplified, valuable content that drives behaviour change
My process
Empathy
User Interviews
15 User Interviews in total
There are a variety of research techniques that generate insights around the needs of people including, but not limited to, observation, interviewing, immersive empathy, and exploring extreme users. In this case we focussed on interviewing and immersive empathy
Client interviews
Creating a product discovery canvas of business vs. customer needs
Mental model immersion
We researched the match between the system and the real world, more concisely, inspected our user's mental model of savings, investment and current vs. wished behaviour. The system should speak the user's language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, this helps information appear in a natural and logical order
Affinity sorting
Ideate and prototype
I started this ideation session by outlining the story I wanted to get across to the users. Story telling is a huge part of engaging games. I combined my story telling with the 7 principles of gamification by Sebastian Deterding’s. This combination of approaches helped the project reach an educative tone, that wasn't overly "preachy".
We used the beta version of the game to for testing. Retro-epic updated the game real time, bringing us closer to ironing out most the bumps
- Sebastian Deterding
Validation and iteration
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We found that most users want to save/invest more money each month but are not sure how to start the process
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In most cases people felt intimidated by the "complex" process of investing. How might they know which is the best option?
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Lower income families are more likely to save money when they can see physical, real world examples that trigger their saving behaviour
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Gamification and education together is a potent mix of reward based behaviour for "good" - I am thoroughly obsessed with gamifying my life
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Sketching before designing saves time and development time, duh, I know right?