Week 08: Concept Development
Summarise your creative progress from this week and reflect critically and analytically on your research findings.
Outline your thinking and working processes, and elaborate on ideas and visual experiments.
Give consideration to any feedback that you may have received.
Week 08 - Crit appointment with Teresa and Survey Monkey!
I booked an appointment with Teresa to go through my progress. It became apparent that my content needed quite a bit of refinement.
Objective:
The primary objective of my game "Lost in Space" app is to generate awareness and engagement among the target audience (18-30-year-olds, Gen Z) for the Science Museum's space archives digital collection. The strategy aims to attract users to explore the app, compete globally for space artefacts which are linked to the Science Museum Collection, and establish a strong online community.
After discussing my project in some detail I really felt my game was too complicated and needed quite a bit of development. I referred back to daily challenge games like ‘wordle’ and ‘connections’ on how they became quite addictive globally.
I looked at ways to keep the player engaged. Key elements to include:
Balanced difficulty: Ensure challenges are achievable to keep players motivated. Is there a reward if completed in a timeframe?
Time sensitivity: Add time-based elements (a clock or countdown timer) to create urgency and excitement
Enticing rewards: Offer rewards that are appealing but not overly generous to maintain balance.
Regular theme rotation: Keep things fresh by changing themes regularly to surprise and engage players.
Social Media features: Incorporate community elements, allowing players to share achievements and compete with friends (TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram)
Dynamic gameplay: Create an ever-changing experience to keep players on their toes.
Daily rewards: Encourage daily participation by offering unique prizes/levels, boosters to go into deep space for completing challenges.
Surprise elements: Introduce unexpected twists or bonus challenges to add an element of surprise. A well done for competing for a level from a astronaut or influencer.
I realised I was missing a key element to my research which was actually finding out what they want. As I have a household with 3 Gen Z members I decided to put a survey together to find out what would interest them most from my ideas. This would determine the platform, time span and social media platforms I plan on using.
My results are below as follows…
Survey Monkey - Trends and positioning for 18 -30 Year olds (Gen Z)
I had never created an online survey before, (another first) but I needed to check that my concept would work with the 18-30 demographic. I found Survey Monkey incredibly intuitive (after a few blips) and set up an easy 10-question survey..
Target Audience:
Age Group: 18-30-year-olds (Gen Z)
Online Platforms: iOS and Android users
My question was simple. To create a range of new solution/s to present information to the public about the digital archive collection at The Science Museum, I needed them to answer how they accessed information online.
Survey Monkey - Conclusion
I had 27 results, but found that on the FREE plan I had subscribed to, I was only allowed the data for 25! However, it gave me a fascinating demographic insight and proved that many of my statistics were correct.
Key statistics included:
The majority of this age only use their phones too access information and the majority have iphones - (I got that correct!)
They are constantly or hourly on their phone to access information - (correct)
They love their social media platforms, and this is what they use their phone the most to access
It is either very important or extremely important to have a visually appealing interface
They would prefer an interactive visualisation to navigate through the digital archive
They like would like a variety of ways to access their digital archive, not just one solution
They are more likely to explore the archive if it has engaging visuals or interactive elements to it
Instagram is their favourite social media platform, followed by TikTok and Snapchat (I got that correct to!)
In conclusion, I felt that combining these results in the form of an online game designed for a smartphone could successfully captivate my target audience, and establish a social community, and position itself as an innovative and educational platform for the space collection archive.