Defining the Brand's Mission + Values
With the mission of enriching the lives of kids and families, Nickelodeon leads numerous community events and opportunities for arts education like NiCE (Nickelodeon Community Efforts).
Opportunity
Nicknack aims to create a safe space for kids to continue the conversation off the TV and from community events.
With great presence among kids via shows and events on television, there exists opportunity for Nickelodeon to have their viewers to continue interacting with their content and characters with handheld electronics.
Product Preview
Discover Challenges
Participate in fun challenges, collaborate with your friends, and watch your favorite Nickelodeon stars live on the app!
Record a Video
Easily edit and record videos with tools like filters and effects!
Upload a Video!
Feel great after uploading each video with engaging animations and privacy settings.
The Process Behind Nick Nack
User Research
Target Users
Because we are not as familiar with designing for kids, we created user-personas to guide our design process. Click them!
Katie, 13
Los Angeles, California
Kate loves to dance and has a small space in her living-room for her to showcase her latest moves to her family!
She uses Nicknack to collaborate with her friends and create dance videos outside of the dance room!
Rob, 12
Seattle, Washington
Nick Nack
Rob loves going outside and is extremely active when it comes to sports and outdoor activities. However, due to sheltering in place, he is unable to see his friends and feels restless.
He uses Nicknack in order to catch up with his friends as well as to engage in his competitive side for challenges.
Naya, 11
San Francisco, California
Nick Nack
Naya is an avid artist. She draws every day in her coloring book and her sketchbook! Her parents have given her chalk-pastel to take it to the next level!
She loves using Nicknack because it challenges her to draw her favorite nickelodeon characters! She gets to view everyone's submissions and join the community in the fun.
User Research
Competitive Analysis
We put ourselves in the kid's perspective by testing out apps made for kids. Here is what we discovered and applied to NickNack.
What kind of interaction capabilities are kids expecting?
How can the app give kids the feeling that they are in control while assuring parents with great security measures?
Discovering the Solution
How can we balance digital safety with digital fun for kids?
Through our research process, we understood that with our target group of 11-13 year olds, the app should be more than just about messaging, and instead, have a primary focus on entertainment and creativity.
The main idea of our app is based around creating videos that are prompted by COVID19-related challenges. This way, kids can come together on this creative platform to participate in these engaging challenges while sharing their videos to their friends, family and other kids as well.
We believe that this is a fun way for kids to collaborate with their friends and family through online means since they’re mostly stuck at home. Kids are now in control of their active entertainment.
Wireframes
Me and my teammates designed several wireframes prior to flushing out our final prototype that explored team-based challenges, badges, and video layouts.
Ideation
Sharing Ideas
My team of 3 sorted through several ideas ranging from different group challenges, viewing experiences and design styles.
Idea 1
Sharing and Commenting
How are we going to share videos and comment on them? How much space will videos take up on the screen?
Idea 2
Viewing a Video
How can we design a new way to view threaded videos?
Idea 3
Working as a Team
What if we had kids form teams to keep each other accountable on their challenges?
Ideation Process
Redesigning Video Collaboration
Tiktok's duet feature inspired our #collabs, a new way of watching linked videos without changing the dimensions.
Messenger Kids and JusTalk were great examples of how to effectively create a safe and secure platform for parents and children.
Style Guide
Taste of Nickelodeon
The style guide aims to preserve Nickelodeon's children-oriented color palette while inviting new icons for a content-creating platform.
How Nick Nack works
Discover Challenges
Through challenges and games, Nicknack pushes for enriching kids with real-world events that take app experiences beyond the screen.
Record a Video
With the easy ability for kids to record and upload videos, kids feel the independence they crave while enabling their social circle to be endless.
Upload a Video!
Driven by Nickelodeon's iconic colors and recognizable characters, Nick Nack keeps the app visually interesting for kid users, even when uploading. videos!
Key Takeaways
The Nickelodeon Brand
Almost all ideas found today will be iterations of a pre-existing one. It just depends on how you execute it and tailor it towards your audience. We stuck to nickelodeon's branding by utilizing their style guide and looking at examples from their current apps and user interface.
Why did we win?
I honestly don't think we would've won if we hadn't looked at how other apps for our target audience of 11-13 year olds functioned. Parental controls were implemented, buttons were larger, and animations were more apparent!
How we collaborated
To avoid wasting time thinking together at the same time. Our team took a few hours off brainstorming on our own and creating wireframes respective to our personal ideas. Our ideas were all completely different, but that was the amazing part of it. It sparked new ideas and helped us progress in our research and overall ideation process!
Challenges
User testing with real kids
More time to user test with real children, and get the opportunity to ask how they would use the product.
Additional Features
I would have loved to design how kids could report hate comments to create a safer and more inclusive platform.
This is us at 9am in the morning
