Baker’s Quest: A Gamified Learning App

Working with four fellow classmates, my team and I developed a gamified baking app called Baker's Quest. In Baker's Quest users learn recipes through guided instruction which earns them coins, experience points, and rewards.

App Idea: Learn new baking skills through a gamified app

Approach: Goal-Directed Design

Duration: 12 weeks (Spring 2023)

Tools: Figma, Figjam, Illustrator, Discord

Role: UX researcher, UI designer

Team Size: 5

Goals: -Improve upon the recipe app format by giving users more guided and detailed instruction

-Provide a new experience which other recipe apps lacked, gamified learning

Dashboard screenshot

Introduction

In my Interaction Design I course; my classmates and I were tasked with developing a mobile app using Alan Cooper's user-first method of Goal-Directed Design (GDD).

Over the semester my teammates Sydney (lead), Laura, Sarah, Kaila, and I developed an app entitled Baker's Quest. Baker's Quest is a baking recipe app in which users become an apprentice of Pastry Pete, a master pastry chef. Through the guidance of Pastry Pete, users bake with easy follow-along instructions to earn coins, rank up, and unlock new recipes.

We wanted to take a more educational approach towards a recipe app. We wanted an app that could help guide bakers through various questions and difficulties in the kitchen while baking. For example, what's the difference between bread flour and all-purpose? How do I know when this cake is done? With the help of Baker's Quest, users can put their worries to ease and have fun as they bake alongside Pastry Pete through step-by-step instruction.

Research Phase

Method: Goal-Directed Design

In order to gain an understanding of Goal-Directed Design our class referred to Alan Cooper's book About Face as a guide. Cooper describes GDD as a 'behavior-oriented design' approach that aims to understand user's goals, needs, and motivations (13). Goal-Directed Design aims to bridge the gap between research results and design solutions (21). About Face breaks down the entire GDD process step-by-step, explaining the importance of each phase.

There are six phases in GDD: research, modeling, requirements, framework, refinement, and support. However, phases have been slightly modified and/or combined to best fit the scope of the course.

In the research phase we gathered qualitative data through user interviews, affinity mapping, competitive audits, and literature reviews. Qualitative data helps us as designers identify common patterns of behavior among user types. And with this data, design choices become more credible and intentional, because they can be traced back to research data.

Overview & Kick-Off Meeting

To commence the research phase, we held a kick-off meeting. Due to this being a school project we were unable to hold a real kick-off with company stakeholders, so instead the team took the role of company stakeholder. The team identified the problem with the current state of recipe apps.

Problem Statement: "The current state of recipe apps, specifically baking apps, have focused primarily on instruction without providing extra incentives for learning. What existing products/services fail to address is engaging their users with guided learning practices and game-like challenges."

After we explored constraints, scope, user perceptions, budget, feasibility, viability etc. in our kick-off, we could begin our research.

Literature Review

To familiarize ourselves with the product domain, our team reviewed a variety of literature on baking, gamification, and learning. We used this literature to develop key questions for our research.

There were 3 questions we asked ourselves:

1.      How does baking fit into a person's everyday life?

2.      What is gamification, and how can it be used to enhance user engagement?

3.      How do you cater towards different learning styles when teaching?

Key Findings

Upon further research we were able to answer these three questions. We now had more clarity on which direction the app should take. In addition, these findings aided us in crafting relevant and poignant user interview questions. Our key findings are as follows:

  • Baking serves as a creative and often therapeutic hobby.

  • Gamification is a strong tool to increase user motivation by combining emotional engagement through story and intrinsic/extrinsic rewards.

  • Intrinsic rewards, like personal growth or mastering a new skill, are more impactful to users.

  • There are three elements of motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose (Burke, 2014).

Competitive Audit

Alongside the literature review, we conducted a competitive audit to further our familiarity with the product domain. We analyzed 4 apps: Habitica, Duo Lingo, Perfect Bake, and Cooking Mama: Let's Cook! and noted their positive and negative attributes.

User Interviews

After our thorough look into the product domain, we compiled a list of questions for user interviews. We asked our 5 interviewees questions pertaining to their:

  • Demographics

  • Lifestyle

  • Baking knowledge

  • Learning habits

  • Attitudes towards mobile games

  • Attitudes towards gamified learning

  • General gaming knowledge

At the end of every user interview, we made an affinity map in which we noted and grouped key takeaways and important themes. These 5 affinity maps were then used to help create our persona in the modeling phase.

Fig 3. Photo taken during a user interview

Fig 2. Screenshot of our affinity maps done via figjam

Modeling

Modeling & Requirements

Using our 5 affinity maps, we charted interviewees along 18 behavioral continuums and took note of where the overlap occurred. After analyzing any data overlaps, we concluded that we had one user-type: a beginner-intermediate baker wanting to improve their foundational skills.

Fig 4 & 5. A screenshot of our continuums

Now that we knew our persona’s goals, we started to consider how the user expects to achieve those goals, and what type of features/functionalities we can implement to help them achieve these goals. We did this by creating a context scenario, which tells the story of why/how/when our persona uses our product.

Here’s a small excerpt from Rose’s context scenario:

Rose wakes up on Saturday morning after a long week at work, looking forward to spending her weekend relaxing at home. While laying in bed, she reaches for her phone and opens up Baker’s Quest. Rose is a creative person with many hobbies, and has recently taken up an interest in baking. She decides that experimenting with her new hobby would be a fun way to enjoy her morning.

She takes her time scrolling through her available Baking Lessons to choose a Recipe Level she has yet to complete. Having already attempted a few Recipe Levels since downloading the app, she is eager to make progress so she can unlock more customization items for her player character.

With this user-type in mind we crafted our primary persona, Rose Sharpe, who is the embodiment of the data we collected. We asked ourselves, what are Rose’s end goals and life goals, what kind of person is she, and how/when would she use Baker’s Quest?

Rose’s full narrative can be found below:

Rose is a young adult woman who lives in an apartment in Atlanta with two other roommates. She’s a creative person who works full-time as a seamstress, and recently got into baking as a way to relax on her days off. When she’s not busy at her job, she enjoys scrolling through cake decorating videos on TikTok for inspiration. This is what initially sparked her interest in learning more about the baking process. She began practicing baking cakes, pastries, and bread whenever she had the chance.


Now, a year later, it’s become a favorite hobby of hers. She loves making delicious pastries and cakes for her friends and family during the holidays. Rose also enjoys baking with her roommates. For instance, on Valentine’s day they’ll get together in the kitchen to make heart-shaped cookies. Community is important to Rose and she appreciates how baking has given her another way to connect with the people she loves.

Rose is a self-starter who takes learning into her own hands. She often uses educational resources like Skillshare in her career as a seamstress, as well as in her off-time to improve her baking skills. Rose makes a conscious effort to review the steps multiple times before starting a new project. As a visual learner, being able to see the instructions in a video also helps her grasp the techniques she’ll need to use. When the instructions aren’t laid out in a sequential order, she can get confused easily.

Failure doesn’t deter her, but the addition of positive reinforcement every now and then makes the experience of learning something more enjoyable. Rose is willing to put the time and effort into creating something she can be proud of. She is happy with her progress and wants to continue honing her skills in baking.

Requirements

Fig 1. A graphic breakdown of our competitive audit