Math Fun Case Study 2019 - 2020

The ‘Dress the dog’ game was a number game where the child had to select the correct number of dots on the shirt in order to dress the dog.

‘Star hunt’ was a counting game where the child would collect stars. The child could have to count in 2’s, 3’s etc. Once they collected all the stars the game was finished.

‘Amazing Amanda’ was a counting/matching game where the child had to match the correct sequence of flowers provided by the robot. The game would finish when the bar was full.

‘Monster Feet’ was a counting game where the child had to place the footprint in the correct answer. The reward for this game was the child was able to see the monster that made the footprint.

Advantage

An advantage to Numeracy Box is the teacher-student interaction. The programme allows the teacher to customise the child’s personal experience and learning outcomes. The application lets the teacher change the level of difficulty depending on the child’s ability and age.

Disadvantage

Visually the program is not as appealing as more modern children’s apps. Numeracy Box is an older program from the early 2000s. Its design can be considered outdated with its lack of colour and interesting theme.

Amazing Coin

Amazing Coin is an educational game for children to practice identifying and solving maths problems with coins. It teaches children how to recognize, count, add, pay and make change with coins. As illustrated in figure 8 above, Amazing coin rewards the children with money which in turn allows them to buy food in the store and eat them later.

The ‘What comes next’ game has the child selecting which coin goes next based on the pattern with the coins. The pattern could be highest to lowest, lowest to highest or counting up in 5’s.

The shop is where the child could purchase items for the fridge based on the money, they earned for completing the ‘What comes next’ game.

Advantage

The coin games are engaging and interesting to play. The variety of games are fun and teaches children valuable math-based skills. The reward system is satisfying as it allows children to earn currency from the different games and use them in the virtual shop.

Disadvantage

The reward system does not match the overarching theme. They look like two different applications were put together. The main game has an underwater theme while the reward system is a grocery store themed activity in the app.

Personas

To help give a better understanding of the user’s needs, a teacher persona and a child persona were created. A teacher would be a relevant user as they would assist and monitor the child while they use the application. Before the child would use the application, the teacher would test it themselves to see if it correlates with their learning plan.

The child would be the main user of the application. Narrowing down a child user can be difficult as children can vary greatly in many aspects. This includes skills, age, disabilities and social background. That is why the teacher persona is created as it would complement the child persona and help narrow down needs.

The teacher persona shows that the application must be simple and easy use in relation to both teacher and child. The application must have activities that are relevant to the teacher’s learning outcomes for the child. The application should allow the teacher to incorporate it into the classroom environment in a natural manner. Finally, the application must be able to improve the math skills of the children using the app.

The child persona shows that the application must be engaging and challenging for children. How the application appears visually is also important as the child may become bored and lose interest. The child must be rewarded for completing tasks as it gives an incentive for the child to continue using the app.

Interviews

During the process of this project 3 interviews were conducted. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 3 primary school teachers of varying ages and experience. These interviews lasted between 30-40 minutes. This decision was made, as this method of interviewing would be best in order to acquire the participants perceptions, opinions and advice directly and more freely. These participants were chosen because they would provide vital insight into the subject and target users of the application as they themselves are in the teaching profession.

The interview participants were informed before the interview that their identities would remain anonymous within this project. The participants looked over the interview notes that were taken down by the researchers during the interview and gave permission for these notes to be used in this project.

All the participants were asked the same set of questions created by the researchers. A sample of the questions that were asked were:

1. “From your experience, what age range do you think this type of app should be aimed at?”

2. “What theme do you think would appeal to children using this app the most and encourage the most engagement (e.g. Animal Themed, Monster Themed etc.)?”

3. “Do you think there should there be a system to create a log in account for each child? If so, what do you think the benefits of this would be? If not, what do you think the negatives would be?”

4. “Should there be a reward system for the user of the app? If so, what kind of rewards system do you think would encourage the most engagement and user satisfaction?”

Reoccurring and/or contrasting answers and themes were noted during these interviews. For example, in relation to Q2 above, there were 3 common answers:

• Keep it simple

• Colourful/visually appealing

• Engaging sound effects

The participants all voiced the same idea that an application like this must be simple enough for the child to use on their own, colourful/visually appealing enough to keep their attention and include enjoyable non- educational, fun little aspects such as quirky sound effects.

This data made it clear to the researchers that the visuals and user experience is just as important as the coding aspect of creating this app.

In relation to contrasting answers that were noted during the interview, Q4 gave a lot of varying opinions on the rewards system of the application. For example, one teacher suggested rewards system of virtual money earned that could be used in a virtual shop in the app to unlock more themes, sound effects, new character animations etc. While another teacher suggested a star reward system. These differed in that the first idea is quite intricate and creates more incentive to keep engaging with the app in order to unlock more fun features. The second suggested idea, in contrast, was simpler and more traditional in that the incentive is to gain more stars than other students. Both ideas encourage greater user engagement with the app but in 2 very different ways. It gave the researchers a better insight into what kind of reward system motivates children. It made the researchers think about the different ways that reward systems can motivate children. This information is vital for the application, as choosing the correct incentive for children in the chosen age range is the most important part of the application experience.

Survey

The aim of the survey was to further narrow down the list of requirements for the application. From the data collected from the 8 surveys conducted, the researchers narrowed down the theme for the application and the subject of the application.(see Appendix A)

The most popular subject suggested throughout the survey was Maths, which is the subject the researchers intend to build the app around. Animals was a popular theme suggested throughout the survey answers as well as the interview answers, which in turn led the researchers to choose an animal theme for the application.

The surveys also allowed the researchers to get a broader selection of reward system ideas that were not considered before, such as rewarding attempts as well as rewarding perfect answers.

As mentioned earlier in the document, the visual appeal of the application is one of the 3 key elements that were mentioned in the interviews. The survey allowed the researchers to expand on that point and get a range of colours that the participants of the survey found throughout their professional experience were the most appealing to children. From the data collected the researchers confirmed the 4 most suggested colours were Yellow, Green, Red and Blue. The most popular colours suggested were mainly primary colours, which was an expected outcome from the researchers due to the fact they were talked about during the earlier interviews.

From the interviews, the researchers got a more narrative insight as to what the participants thought of a log in account system for the application. In the surveys the researchers created a close ended question in relation to a log in account system. It was a simple yes or no answer option for this question in the survey. 5 out of the 8 survey participants said yes to the login account system idea. This is a 62.5% yes vote in favour of the system, which was invaluable information for the research. This was done in order to gain more quantitative data that could be measured, whereas the interviews provided more details on what the participants actually thought of the idea and what they thought were the benefits/negatives of the idea. This gave the researchers a great mixture of qualitative and quantitative data for their research.

Requirements Modelling

From the research, process requirements were narrowed down into functional and non-functional.

Functional Requirements

Child

1. The student will be able to login

2. The student will be able to register

3. The student will be able to play games

4. The student will be able to view progress

5. The student will be able to spend reward

6. The student will be able to play quiz

Teacher

1. The teacher will be able to view all students

2. The teacher will be able to view single student report

3. The teacher will be able to assign games to student

4. The teacher will be able to assign quiz to student

The goal while implementing the requirements is to deal with the student side and then develop the teacher side of the app. For example, if a game is implemented the idea is to work on the teacher being able to view the results from said game. The end to end functionality is an important aspect in the development of the application.

Non Functional Requirements

• Level Up system

• Sound

• Security/privacy child only see their progress

• 
  

A systems non-functional requirement may include performance under which such things as response time may be included. It is also related to maintainability and scalability of the app. In the Math Fun app non- functional requirements would include a level up system where the child can reach a new level after completing activities and quizzes.

Use Case Diagram

The actors within the use case diagram are the student and the teacher. The use cases are goals. The actor interacts with the use case.

Feasibility

The technologies that are planned on being used in the development of the application are Android Studio and SQL Lite. Android Studio allows application development within the android operating system. SQL Lite would be the local database where the information would be stored.

Potential risks

Android has a large learning curve. To overcome this android developers’ resources and tutorials will be very beneficial.

Due to time constraints certain functionalities will be prioritised. This will include the quiz, My Animals, and game activities. This is to ensure that if all functional requirements are not complete, it will still be a nice working app.

Conclusion

The overall goal was to establish requirements through various research methods. It is through this research process that a more concrete image of a children’s math application was established.

Researching children’s applications allowed features and design elements to be picked out and analysed. This would help build the foundations for the application.

The interviews, surveys and personas helped narrow down requirements and design aspects that were not fully realised yet such as colour and theme. This also gave insight into the maths learning curriculum as well as the teachers learning plan.

The main lessons in this app will be math-based. Reinforcing the lessons will be quizzes. The theme will Animals with bright colours.

Design

This section will discuss the program design and the user interface design of the application. The program design section will look at aspects such as the technology used to create the app, the structure of Android studio, design patterns, the application architecture and database design. The user interface design will look at wireframes, user flow, style guide and storyboards for games.

Program Design

The program design refers to the design required to make the task of programming and coding of the application more straightforward.

Technologies

Android studio was chosen as it is an easy way to create application quickly and efficiently. The official integrated development environment for Google’s Android operating system is Android studio. This means that an application can be created for any android device. It was also chosen as it met the requirements that were needed in creating the children’s application.

Other possible technologies were unity as it is used for making games. The decision to use Android studio was based on the fact it is more efficient for creating apps for tablets and phones.

Structure of Android

An android project within android studio consists of source files, resource files and app modules. The folders and files inside android studio include:

• Manifest file/folder

• Java folder

• Resource folder

• Gradle scripts

Manifest file/folder

The manifest file is always present in an android project’s root directory. The manifest file gives the java package a name which provides it with a unique identifier. Within the manifest folder is the manifest file. The manifest file is used to create an android application. Inside the file are application components such as activities, android version, services and metadata.

Java folder

Throughout the development of the app the java folder will hold java file. When creating a new project, a default file called Main Activity is created. This activity file is the first screen that appears when the application is launched.

Resource folder

The Resource folder consists of UI strings, images and XML layouts. This is where the non-code sources are stored. The drawable folder holds the images that are used throughout the development of an android application. The layout folder consists of XML layout files. This defines the user interface of the application. The midmap folder allows icons to be defined. These icons can be used on the home screen of an application. Finally, the values folder holds XML file such as style definitions colours and strings.

Gradle scripts

The gradle is an automated build system. It consists of files that define a build configuration. Theses configurations are applied to all modules in the project application.

• 1.Build.gradle(Module)

• Implementations and plugins build configurations that are applied to the applications modules.

• 2.Build.gradle(Project)

• Build-scripts.

Design Patterns

Android is loosely based on Model View Controller (MVC).

Model

The Model is all classes that represent data. In relation to the application this would be the quiz class and the AnimalEntity class. The View and controller are dependent on the Model. In relation to the controller the model helps update data. The Model also allows the View to retrieve the data.

View

View is the UI layer, which is the visible layout on screen that the user can interact with. In quiz activity the resources are defined in various XML files (activity_quiz.XML) in the resource folder.

Controller

Activities making decisions and passing data to the correct place. Controls the application logic and will react to inputs from a user. It presents the requested data to the user. The data is retrieved from the Model.

Application architecture

Application architecture allows the applications framework to be defined. This section will discuss figure 15 in relation to the applications architecture.

Architecture components

Android architecture components are an assortment of different libraries that help build and maintain applications. These components will be used in the building process of the application project.

Room

The data for the application will be stored in an SQLite database. The room persistence library is used as a wrapper around SQLite. This will reduce repetitive code when it comes to creating tables and database operations. Java classes can be turned into entities. Each represents a table in the SQLite database. The Data Access Object (DAO) is used to communicate with the SQLite.

ViewModel

The next architecture component that will be used is ViewModel class. There will be several ViewModel classes within this app. The ViewModels will hold and prepare data for the different interfaces. This means that the data will not be placed directly into the activities and fragments. The activities will connect to the view model and retrieves the relative data. The viewModel is the gateway for the UI controller to the rest of the app. Database operations are not initiated from an activity directly.

The only data source will be the room database and the connection point to the SQLite will be the DAO. The ViewModel will not call the methods on the DAO directly. Instead there will be a simple repository class used in between. The repository is a simple java class and is not a part of the architecture components library. The repository can mediate between different data sources such as the SQLite database. The ViewModel does not have to interact with the different data sources directly. It does not have to worry about the data source and the way in which it is fetched. The repository creates a clean API where the ViewModel can connect to. It is an abstraction layer that gives ViewModels a single access point.

Database design

The database is used in the application so the data for the quiz and Animals can be retrieved, managed and stored. An ERD diagram was created to represent the different entities within the database.

Entities

Entities can be an object, person, place or thing that is tracked in the database. In relation the application one of the entities is Questions. The Questions entity has attributes which are the ID, question, options A to D and answer. The table below shows an example of Questions entity represented as a row and the attributes are represented as the columns.

Process design

The UML diagram represents the classes within the app. The classes have attributes and behaviours. Private operations hide information outside the class partition. Public operations allow all other classes to view the marked information. An attribute is a piece of data that contains values that describe each instance of that class. Also known as fields, variable or properties.

In the questions class, an instance of this class is a specific question. Inside the questions class attributes are created such as ID, question and answer. This allows a specific instance of the questions class to be identified.

Methods allows the behaviour of a class to be specified. In the questions class the behaviours include being able to change questions and read a question.

The attributes for the AnimalEntity class would be ID and text. The behaviours in the AnimalEntity class would allow an Animal to be changed and readable.

Wireframe

The wireframes were designed to show the structural layout of the application. Each wireframe created for the application describes functionality and lays out the content on each page.

Figure above shows the wireframe for the main menu of the application. The application main menu has a simple structure and layout to make it easier to navigate.

Figure above displays the activity and quiz menu. The menus would be separate but would have the same layout structure.

The shop wireframe focuses on the placement of the content that could be purchased in the shop. The organisation of the content helps establish how it should be interacted with.

User Flow Diagram

The user flow diagram reflects the journey the user will take while using the application. This establishes how the user will experience the app and ensures that important processes are not missed. Objectives are created for the user, for example in user flow diagram figure it shows the flow of how a user might take a quiz or exit a quiz.

Style guide

The colours used for this application are blue green and yellow. These colours were chosen based on the survey results. The data collected showed that blue, green and yellow were the most recurring colours. The teachers who participated in the survey found that children were the most responsive to these colours.

Figure above shows the use of the colour palette that was selected based on survey results. This colour palette would change later during the project cycle to a green and orange colour palette (see appendix E). The final version of the project would use warmer colours and cut out the cooler colours that were initially chosen such as blue.

The quiz page as can be seen in figure 27 is designed to display multiple quiz options for the user to choose from. The final version of the application only has one quiz due to time restraints. This meant that the quiz menu design was altered to suit the single quiz. (see Appendix E)

Figure above shows the design for the shop/My Animals. The design shows a list of animals that the user could purchase and view.

Typography

The typography selected for the application were Noteworthy-Bold and Noteworthy-light. Other fonts were looked at such as comic-sans, Bubblegum-sans and Jollygood-sans. Certain aspects were taken into consideration before deciding on a font. First was readability, as it is important that the child can read what they are seeing. The second aspect that was taken into consideration was the style of the font. The font has a handwritten appeal to it. Children can often become bored and uninterested in fonts that lack character.

Storyboard

Three small games based around the maths curriculum are being developed within the application. The first game is a shape game. The child is given a shape and they must tap the correct shape to earn points. If the child taps the wrong shape a message appears and tells them to try again. (figure 31)

The second game is a money counting game (figure 32). The money game asks children to make a certain amount of money with the coins given. The child clicks on the coin and the number is added to the total. If the child goes over the amount a message pops up encouraging the child to try again.

Conclusion

The design of the application would change during the project life cycle. This is due to features being cut due to time constraints. The program design would stay the same except for cut features like the shop. The user interface design had changes such as colour scheme and style guide. The storyboards for the games would also change and be re-worked to a colour matching game and a number matching game. The design for the final version of the application has core elements that were planned from the beginning such as quiz and games.