RESEARCH

Literature & Competitive Analysis

The insights we gathered through our literature review supported gamification as an effective approach to coding education, highlighting its value to increase performance, self-efficacy, engagement, and motivation. Gamification is particularly valuable for our target users as it can reduce syntax issues that tend to trouble novice programmers.

To understand the current landscape of gamification platforms, we examined the strengths and weaknesses of nine competitor products. For easy comprehension, we gathered our research into the following visual.

Competitive Analysis Dashboard

User Interviews

We conducted interviews with eight adults who have an interest in coding to understand the challenges and concerns that impact their decision to pursue a coding education. We also identified the elements of digital learning that they found to be effective. These insights were organized into an affinity map (shown below).

To turn our research insights into design ideas, our team conducted a five minute brainstorming session in Figjam where each member listed the features they deemed valuable for our game. After the session, we came together to collectively place these features along a four-quadrant graph to consider the effort and impact of each design. Features with the highest impact and loweest effort were prioritized for our prototype.

Brainstorming Figjam

Four-quadrant Brainstorming Graph