BeePopulate! IOS
The focus of BeePopulate! is to provide awareness towards the ever declining bee population of 2015 - 2016, and hope to educate the public as well as revitalize the issue in mainstream media via an IOS game app.
Scope: 3 Months
Role: UX Designer
Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, InVision
Opportunity
We saw the bee crisis as an opportunity to help spread awareness as well as a way to pave into the mobile gaming sphere. At the time, as a team we took inspiration from the rise of mobile applications, especially mobile games and how much traction they drew. We found that games at the time were heavily underutilized as a tool for revenue, exposure, and users. Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector in particular was our main inspiration, it provided us with a simple base to build from, and several key components for BeePopulate! later on
Trendability - Consistent User Base - Non-evasive Business Model - Scalability
User Research
We scoped out the playing field by sending out several online surveys, conducting a few contextual interviews, and creating user personas.
Through our methodology, we found out several key components. Including users’s preferred mobile platform (IOS/Andriod), age range, current awareness, pain points, and our potential business model
Questions Asked
Do you use mobile gaming applications? If so, which do you play most? If not, why don’t you play?
What types of mobile games do you enjoy playing? List your favorite and elaborate on why.
How important are graphics and appearance of the game to you using the ratings from 1 through 5 (1 being not important at all and 5 being extremely important).
If you do not usually play mobile games and were introduced to a game with graphics and characters that were appealing to you, would you play?
What current environmental issues are you aware of? Maybe list 4.
If made possible, would you play a game relating to a current environmental issue? Why or why not.
List all the facts and behaviors that you know about bees.
“I would not play an environmentally-related game if it made me sad or bummed…sometimes these problems seem so big that I feel helpless and hopeless and can’t do anything.”
“If the game was informative but fun and helped bring
awareness to a cause…I would be very interested.”
The M.V.P.
For our M.V.P, we needed simple constructive mechanics that drive our intentions. We came up with a few things that holistically represent BeePopulate!
Mechanic 1: Incorporation of The Garden and gardening as the medium of play.
Mechanic 2: Flowers will be planted in the Garden, and will attract Bees.
Mechanic 3: Attraction will be based of flower class/type/family/etc
Mechanic 4: Progress Logging, keeping the game personal but also goal driven.
The Bee-siness Model
BeePopulate! will closely abide by a Freenium Business Model. Allowing users to download and play the game as a free user, in addition to being able to buy In-App incentives.
Our main incentive for In-App purchases is allowing users to participate and involve themselves in the campaign for saving the bees. By having their purchase proceeds be shared with environmental agencies advocating for the Bee Campaign (GreenPeace (Save The Bees)), Honeylove! Urban Beekeepers, Bee Raw Save the Bees Fund).
Prototypes and Iterations
Paper Prototype > Low Fidelity Prototype (Digital) > High Fidelity Prototype (Digital)
