Waste Separation Mobile Game
Game design & UI/ux design
INTRODUCTION
"What kind of waste are you?" is an educational tower defense game. A mobile game about waste separation that helps people get familiar with how to distinguish garbage as they interact with their phones. The difficulty of the game will gradually increase with rounds, and when people have the ability to approach the end of the game, they will also know a lot about waste separation.
Skip to final deliverablestimeline
Jul 2019 - Mar 2020
overview
What's the problem?
In June of 2019, Shanghai implemented its waste separation policy for the first time, and the public's attitude toward this policy has been both positive and negative. However, for people who have not been exposed to waste separation since childhood, there is difficulty in needing to get used to it in a short period of time.
What's the solution?
Through a casual tower defense game, users can easily familiarize garbage sorting in a fragment of time.
What are the real reasons that prevent people from separate waste?
discover
Research overview
People's attitude towards the implementation of waste separation
The pain points people encounter when learning to separate waste
Qualitative research
Conducted 8 In-Depth Stakeholder Interviews
Based on interactive contact and contextual qualitative research, we can build a deep understanding of future target users.
Insights from interview
Many people are not sure how to properly separate garbage due to the complexity of the types of household waste
"There are so many different kinds of garbage, it's really hard to tell the difference and always confuse similar garbage."
People have the knowledge and awareness of waste separation, but still need time to think about what kind of waste is
"Each time I remember, wait until the next time or take some time to think ."
Lack of positive incentive mechanism, people lack enthusiasm for waste separation
"Now there is an app for learning garbage classification, but it is very boring, and I always don't want to learn it after a while."
Our focus
How might we make it easier and more interesting for people to remember how their waste should be separeted?
Insight convert to opportunity
Many people are not sure how to properly separate garbage due to the complexity of the types of household waste.
How might we create corresponding memory points for different kinds of garbage?
Animated garbage images
People have the knowledge and awareness of waste separation, but still need time to think about what kind of waste is.
How might we train users' conditioned reflexes for waste sorting?
Stimulate users to sort waste several times in a short period of time
Lack of positive incentive mechanism, people lack enthusiasm for waste separation.
How might we make users enjoy the process of learning how to separate waste?
Transform the learning process into a casual but challenging mobile game
Design
Game introduction
"What kind of waste are you?" is a tower defense game. The mission is to stop the garbage monster from destroying the city gates to enter the city. The city gate has a life value of 10 blood, which means that there are 10 chances to be bitten by the garbage monster, and the mission will fail if the gate is destroyed when the life value is 0. The monsters will appear in waves, each wave will gradually increase in difficulty, players need to reasonably place four kinds of garbage cans according to the type and number of garbage monsters, testing the player's proficiency in garbage classification, the game will have 50 rounds, if the round ends when the city gate still exists, the game is won. The operation is very simple, just click on the unused area in the city map to place the garbage can turrets, and during the game, each garbage can turret can be upgraded once to reach the top level, after upgrading, not only the appearance changes, its output also becomes more powerful. Each type of trash can will deal double damage to its corresponding trash monster, and half damage to the rest of the monsters.
Character design
According to four different types of garbage, four types of garbage monsters are reasonably designed.
Game demo
Digital painting
High fidelity UI design
Takeaways & next steps
Takeaways
This was the first time I did a whole project by myself, and I got an understanding of the overall process control. And after that I wanted to play the game for real, so I delivered all the files to the engineer to build, and through my communication with the engineer, I also understood how to make up for the gap between the designer and the engineer.
Next Steps
I gave this game to my friends around me to test, and most of them agreed that they had a new understanding of garbage sorting after the game. After that I will add more kinds of garbage monsters and different game maps and eventually try to release this game.
