Mathblast
Learning Elementary Math with Virtual Reality
Type: VR Education
Project time: 4 weeks
Game Engine: Unity Platform Deployed: Oculus Rift
OVERVIEW:
PRODUCT OVERVIEW
Mathblast is an educational application teaching basic mathematics in Virtual Reality. The goal with this project was to create an experience that kids want to use for hours a week to practice their basic mathematics in school.
THE CHALLENGE
Design and develop an entertaining Virtual Reality educational, skill-building application.
Team:
Tim Kanellitsas
Bryn Christenson
Project Duration & Deployment Platform:
4 weeks
Oculus Rift
Ideation:
Recognizing that Math required the most repetition and memorization, we decided to revolved the application around basic mathematics: Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division.
“Math, writing, reading, and foreign language were the core pillars of my Elementary School education.”
VR Math Education application
Concept Design and Theme
Space theme, Storyboard Key Elements of Game Design
Page 1 out of 4
Space-themed games across the Oculus store outnumber all other environments COMBINED. Space-themed have the most positive ratings. Both stats represent the popularity of space-themed games.
- Time pressure (objects coming at player). Impending doom turns out to be a great motivator!
- Score. A point system incentivizes players to continue playing.
- Randomness in asteroid location and size.
- Operation choice.
- Level difficulty choice.
Wireframes & In-VR Spatial Design
Designing and prototyping the cockpit, ship, asteroid belt with Google Block and Tilt Brush. In-VR design applications are effective tools for spatial design.
Designing the environment and ship cockpit
Wireframes/ Key Elements of our VR UI
- Visibility Zones. The comfortable viewing zone is approximately 140 degrees.
- Font Sizing and Style. 6 cm in heigh for every 1 meter back.
- Distance. A comfortable distance from the user is 3 meters.
- Types of UI (contextual display vs superimposed vs HUD)
Outlining Game Mechanics
Delegating Jobs To Be Done
The game mechanics took the most time, since Bryn and I are not engineers. After a few product management meetings, we distilled the “jobs to be done” list down to 6 core areas:
- Equation Generator
- State Machine
- Game Manager
- Asteroid Spawning and Path
- Keeping Score
- UI manager
- Input Interaction
Player Input: Designing for friction & Flow
multiple choice vs voice recognition vs reticle
Test:
Usability testing all three
Tested on 9 people
- Slightly more friction with voice recognition and reticle, leading to higher engagement
- Voice recognition software too limited to be scaleable
Key Findings:
- Usability and user testing revealed voice recognition to be the preference.
- Not enough "friction" with multiple choice .
- Voice recognition too inaccurate.
- A scroll dial around the handle for quicker number input.
- Concept Design for future iteration.We suspect this will be a faster input interaction, increasing flow
A Forth Interaction Explored
Final concept:
Reticle-Based Interaction, Button Input
Group usability testing and feedback
KPIS:
- KPIs noticeable excitement when playing from subjects
- Subjects eager to keep playing and beat their high score.
Insights & Feedback:
Consider adding “bail out” or pause button if students need a little more time.
Experience doesn’t cover theory of the operations, limiting the application as a classroom tool.
Answer input interaction is cumbersome. Need a quicker and more efficient input method.
Next steps
- New input interaction —> We explored using the dial pad earlier. In future iterations, we will user test the dial input to see if users can more efficiently input their answers.
- Multiplayer —> Kids should be introduced to teamwork and group exercises as early as possible. This increases their social and collaboration skills, and acts as an additional level of motivation to improve. Players with teammates may behave differently in the game.
- Polish! Polishing with Unity's special effects makes an experience look professional.
- Mobile with strong voice recognition —> VR isn’t scaleable because of the cost of devices. This game could be very scaleable if the students can use mobile VR. Most kids have phones now, and if they don’t, schools can hopefully provide the equipment (or Google!).
- Incorporating Story —> A compelling story creates more emotional connection and buy-in. It also creates a feeling of progress, according to Nir Eyal’s theory around Game Thinking and Game Design. We suspect that an interesting story to follow will increase play time, leading to more repetitions.
- AR counterpart --> If VR isn’t an option for most students, perhaps an AR version of Mathblast would make more sense. This concept would be a combination of Mathblast and Pokemon Go.
- Behavioral Analytics with KPIs —> This version of Mathblast did not include any behavioral analytics tools. We were not collecting any data, despite that being a foundational part of educational strategy. Future iterations should collect data, and then use behavioral analytics to frame Key Performance Indicators.