Project Overview

Worked on a team of six for a two-day Nickelodeon hackathon or “Nickathon”. I worked in several functions including writing the Executive Summary, creating and managing our presentation deck, overseeing UX, and managing product features. Our team placed in the top seven out of twenty teams.

Our concept revolved around a multi-faceted app that would allow kids to play with different games and puzzles. One of the games would allow kids to place Nick characters in real-world areas for the friends to be able to find. Our prototype focused around the iOS AR kit, which would allow Nick characters to be placed into the camera view. We also pitched pairing the app with wearable technology, to allow children to receive notifications through haptic feedback. We knew that kids in our target demographic were too young to have their own phone, so we figured that wearable tech was the next best thing. The shoes will light up and vibrate when the kid gets a notification. In the future, as wearable fabrics evolve, we pitched the idea that the shoes could transition to different brands as the kid interacts with different brands within the app.

Team “Cool Shoes” Executive Summary

Elevator Pitch

Allow children to walk in the Nickelodeon world and interact with their favorite characters through an immersive, gaming experience. 

Background

Kids in the Nickelodeon demographic love gadgets, cool fashion and AR experiences- but very few have a phone or device with a data plan.  Side Kicks give them a way to stay engaged with an AR app even when they’re away from the “parent” device. 

Overview

Side Kicks deliver on the Nickelodeon brand goal of making the world a more playful place by rewarding kids for active play by giving them points for every step they take.  When paired with the app, the shoes also alert kids when a character experience is nearby.  They can find the character, interact with them in an augmented reality experience and complete a show-branded mini game to collect more points and open more levels.  

Target Audience

Our target audience is children from five to twelve who are fans of Nick content and who love tech and fashion.  Since kids always need new shoes- and love to get the latest blinged-out styles- our concept has the benefit of secondary revenue generated by apparel sales/licensing deals.

Product Prioritization

I put together an exercise to help us figure out what to prioritize according to our project discipline. Each team had a total of 12 story points to plan around with high priority counting as 3 points, medium priority counting as 2 points, and a nice to have counting as 1 point. From there we were able to collectively negotiate what features we determined to be our MVP.

We negotiated the MVP to be:

• Augmented Reality

• Wearable technology (Shoes)

• Haptic Feedback (Lights/Vibration)

• Voice Interaction

Strategy/Technology

• Implemented augmented reality using native iOS ARKIT

• The AR app displays Nickelodeon assets into 3D space overlaid onto the camera view

• The AR app allows users to interact with characters by tapping on the character to have the character talk to the user, or speaking to the character to illicit a response.

Building Brand Loyalty

To build brand loyalty with children we propose creating a smart shoe to further augment the app-based technology. The idea is for the shoe to have smart fabric that can change to fit the brand skin of the app that the child is playing with. The shoe would also have a haptic immersion through LED lights and vibrating notifications.

 Next Steps

• Going from our initial proof of concept to one where children can interact with their favorite Nick characters in an animated world that looks like the actual show.

• Adding the capability for children to choose to play games or interact with puzzles in an AR experience

• Creating an app or interface that adds more Nick characters and/or shows

• Researching the ability to create an AR experience that works on other platforms other than iOS

• Adding social capabilities where kids can create an avatar and play together

• Adding the ability for children to express emotions through emojis.

Storyboards

Storyboard for Creating a Show Like Experience

Adding Haptics and the Ability to Earn Points