Design an app about learning strategies and life mastery

MadeToGrow aims to strengthen your ability to cope with challenges and improve long-term performance.

The content in our app is based on extensive research related to neuroscience and “growth mindset” (i.e. Dr. Carol Dweck, Stanford University). Having a “growth mindset” means knowing that abilities like intelligence and talent can be developed, and that our effort when learning, struggling, making mistakes and experiencing setbacks develops our abilities. Newer research on brain plasticity supports this, showing how the brain changes and grows, i.e. when we learn new things.

Our target audience is wide, since most people can benefit from our app. They are pupils, students, teachers, parents, colleagues and leaders.

http://madetogrow.no/en/

Key words are encouraging growth and learning, playful, intuitive, clean, smooth and supportive.

Encouraging growth and learning: if you could think of an environment that is relaxing and ideal for concentration, play, learning and growth, what kind of environment would you put yourself in?

Playful: the app will include mini games in various forms. They might map the user in something, teach the user something new or train the user in a new skill. We are also adding gamification elements like animated characters and progress indicators. We prefer designs that don't give us the typical "e-learning" vibe. We would also appreciate creative suggestions for how to show progress.

Intuitive: since the app is targeting a wide target group it must therefore be intuitive to navigate. This can partly be achieved by keeping it clean and avoiding too many disturbances.

Clean: we want to avoid the use of too many strong and screaming colours. The app should be pleasant to look at.

Smooth: the app will be developed in a game engine and will therefore have plenty of opportunities for UI transitions and animations in general.

Supportive: we are implementing a type of mentor we call a buddy. The buddy will play a central part in the app by mapping your preferences and offer suggestions based on them, try to cheer up and encourage you etc. The buddy should be able to wink, smile, laugh and more. If we choose to implement full-bodied characters, then the buddy should also be able to do gestures like high-fiving. You will be able to pick between a set of buddies (since users have different preferences for whom they trust as mentors).

Since our app is about growth, motivation etc. we want a character that looks energetic and encouraging. This means a confident character that looks supportive, positive and gives hope for future success.

NOTE ABOUT COLOURS
You do not have to follow the same colour scheme that we use on our home page.

EXTRA NOTE ABOUT THE CHARACTER
You do NOT have to animate the buddy (mentor). All animation work is something we can take care of ourselves. However, we do need a suggestion for how the buddy can look like in order for us to see how it fits the overall design. If the character is too complicated this might complicate our animation work, so keep that in mind.

MadeToGrow

The app has 6 main topics:
- Mastery
- Self-esteem
- Motivation
- Stress
- Learning
- Performance pressure

Each main topic will consist of several sub topics that we call challenges. Some example challenges are Sleep, Set Goals, Fundamental Needs and Learning Strategies.

All challenges contain a set of tasks in the form of text, images, videos, sound, different types of task templates like multiple choice and questionnaires and more advanced mini games. A challenge will typically have 6-12 tasks.

We need proposals for the following screens:

1. HOME
2. MAIN TOPICS
3. CHALLENGE
4. TASK

SCREEN 1: HOME

Here the user's buddy (mentor) greets you. The buddy might ask how you feel and provide a suitable response. If you recently completed a challenge the buddy might suggest new challenges. In another case the buddy might share en encouraging quote.

We want to show your progress throughout the app. Although we don't know exactly how we are going to implement this quite yet, it would be nice to see ideas for a (or several) progress bar(s) next to your avatar somewhere on the home screen. The progress bar(s) can represent progress, learning or growth.

You must be able to navigate to:
- main topics
- user profile
- settings

SCREEN 2: MAIN TOPICS

This is an overview of all main topics.

You must be able to:
- select a main topic
- see progress of each main topic
- see if a main topic has been 100% completed

SCREEN 3: CHALLENGE

This is an overview of all the tasks in a challenge.

We would appreciate creative input on how to show tasks and progress of a challenge in an engaging way. Are we able to avoid a plain list of tasks?

You must be able to:
- navigate home and back to challenge or main topics
- see a short brief about the challenge (maybe the buddy can give it?)
- see the type of each task (is it video, multiple choice, elimination game or other?)
- select a task
- see overall progress of challenge
- see which tasks the user has done and not

SCREEN 4: TASK

We want to see how the app can look when you're doing a task.

We have attached a document (MTG Task Templates.pdf) that describes the task templates we have implemented thus far. You are free to use this document as inspiration.

The buddy (perhaps only the head?) can be part of the task and give meaningful feedback to the user. The user should be able to click on the buddy for help.

The user must be able to close the task at any time.

Characters need to be in a style that is easy to animate.

Since the design has to appeal to a wide array of target audiences, we need a design that appeals to younger audiences. At the same time, it can't be too childish for mature target groups like teachers or company leaders.

LANDSCAPE MODE ONLY
Even though we require design proposals for Android, we also want to inform that we are developing the app simultaneously for mobile devices and Windows. Several planned mini games and task templates will be challenging to scale for Portrait mode and allowing Portrait mode will therefore complicate development. That's why we strongly prefer design proposals to be tailored for Landscape mode only.