Nicknack
While quarantining, my team of 3 participated in a 2-day Nickelodeon x Adobe Creative Jam and won first place out of 145+ teams across the US and Canada. We were tasked to help kids feel safe, informed, and connected in the spirit of Nickelodeon’s prosocial initiative, #KidsTogether, amid COVID19.
The brief focuses on Nickelodeon’s launch of #KidsTogether, a global, multi-platform prosocial initiative with tips for kids and families on how to stay healthy during the viral outbreak, as well as ideas for activities to do together at home. Nickelodeon is doing its part to help kids and families amid the coronavirus crisis, and therefore, we were tasked to help kids feel safe, informed, and connected in the spirit of #KidsTogether.
Design an Android tablet or Apple iPad app that provides a safe way for kids to communicate, share, and connect with their friends and family.
My team created key targets we wanted to hit in order to achieve the most productive and usable solution, while staying within the orders of the given prompt.
We want kids to learn to respect and celebrate other people’s work.
We want kids to be creative and make videos that can inspire others!
We want kids to build relationships and connect with others virtually.
We want kids to learn how to stay safe at home and fight COVID19.
Nicknack aims to create a safe space for kids to continue the conversation off the TV and from community events.
With great presence among kids via shows and events on television, there exists opportunity for Nickelodeon to have their viewers to continue interacting with their content and characters with handheld electronics.
Designing a Nickelodeon app experience in mind, we had to think about our target audience, 11-13 year olds (grades 6-8), how they use technology, and how they learn. With no access to any 11-13 year olds during this quarantine, we had to search for our user research inspiration elsewhere. We highlighted a few key points that we wanted to focus on in our product from an article on how to design for children.
1. want a good challenge
2. want feedback on everything (visual or auditory)
3. are more trusting than adults
4. develop faster than adults
5. need endless possibilities
6. want a little something extra
Crafting personas to guide our design process
We put ourselves in the kid's perspective by testing out apps made for kids. Here is what we discovered and applied to NickNack.
Through our research process, we understood that with our target group of 11-13 year olds, the app should be more than just about messaging, and instead, have a primary focus on entertainment and creativity – a product that was engaging and fun yet still educational.
The main idea of our app is based around creating videos that are prompted by COVID19-related challenges. This way, kids can come together on this creative platform to participate in these engaging challenges while sharing their videos to their friends, family and other kids as well. Essentially, the app serves as a fun medium for kids to collaborate with their friends and family through online means since they’re mostly stuck at home.
We designed several wireframes prior to flushing out our final prototype that explored team-based challenges, badges, and video layouts.
My team sorted through several ideas ranging from different group challenges, viewing experiences and design styles.
How are we going to share videos and comment on them? How much space will videos take up on the screen?
How can we design a new way to view threaded videos?
What if we had kids form teams to keep each other accountable on their challenges?
Tiktok’s duet feature inspired our #collabs in which all videos that collaborate (or are related to one another) together are on one page, and kids can slide seamlessly to enjoy the content. Collabs are a new way of watching linked videos without changing the dimensions.
They style guide maintains a simple and easy interface for kids to navigate while recreating the look and feel of a Nickelodeon app.
On Nicknack, kids can create short videos based on the challenge prompt provided by Nickelodeon. Kids can watch a challenge started by their friend, and collaborate with them to make their challenge a trend. Through these video challenges that are updated frequently, it serves as an interesting and subtle way of teaching kids how to stay safe and what the best practices are during COVID19.
The parent will need to agree to allow Nicknack to access their media on their phone regarding to COPPA policy, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
The trending tab features current, popular videos. Each video is related to a challenge that updates frequently for kids to participate in. They are also able to switch to the friends tab to view their friends’ challenges and collab with them.
With the easy ability for kids to record and upload videos, kids feel the independence they crave while enabling their social circle to be endless.
Research is powerful
With no direct access to our target audience, we relied heavily on research. We were the only team out of the top 10 to have implemented a parental gate. Do your research, look at what already exists, and really understand your user.
Stay organized
Because we had to work together remotely, it was extremely important to have everything centralized online and accessible for everyone. We had very strong communication because our documentation was.
#teamnosleep #12hourzoomsession
