La Méduse Violette
Project Overview
La Méduse Violette is a company that specializes in innovative learning formats, such as augmented/virtual reality and gamification. Their goal is to put compelling narrative storylines at the core of the user experience. One of their main focus when I worked for them was to produce interactive educative games for children.
I had the opportunity to join the team during a 2 months summer internship from july to the end of august 2024, to work on two of their ongoing projects, "Carnet Magique" and "Water Screen", which I will go over in the next section.
On these two projects, I worked as a UX/UI Designer.
Challenges
- I had the trust of the team to work in total autonomy and produce documentation as well as functional prototypes for both Carnet Magique and Water Screen
- I had to take into account the fact that the target audience was children, hence I had to design in a way to fit their needs and cognitive abilities.
- Making complex functional prototypes using figma to help the team have a clear vision of the interactions they could go for.
- Communicating my intentions clearly with the team during presentations and make sure they were correctly understood and actionable.
- Working on prototypes for a project still in conception phase.
My Work
Setting Usability Standards
The first thing I wanted to do was to work with the team before working on the projects. This way, they would have a better understanding of my work and the topics I could help them on.
To do that, I made a comprehensive document that I presented them and that they can refer to at any moment. It is detailing the Usability Heuristics of Bastien and Scapin and how they can benefit the user experience as a whole. I also made sure to add examples linked to the projects they are working on to make it even clearer.
You can check out the document I produced by clicking the button below. Of course, it is dense but I wanted it to be as complete as possible so that they could have all the information they needed. It was presented to the team during a meeting in a condensed way.
Water Screen
Water Screen is an interactive installation destined to museums, in which you interact with an interface by dipping your hands in water.
- It has to be modular enough to be adaptable to different museums. The goal is mainly to have interactive informations about what can be found in the expositions.
- It is destined to a young audience so interactions have to be as simple and straight-forward as possible.
- It is an innovative and experimental approach to an interface, and I had to take into account that inputs may sometimes not be very precise. Hence, interactive objects had to be large.
Having these constraints in mind, I made a mid-fidelity figma prototype that is fully interactible. I wanted to set the tone for a vibrant color palette for the final design, so I used generative AI to iterate quickly and help the team see the direction they could go in for further UI art designs.
You can check out the prototype and all the interactions by clicking on the button below.
Carnet Magique
Carnet Magique is also an installation for children but this time, using a mobile app and augmented reality. In this game, you follow the story of Lola the turtle by scanning stickers scattered around a room filled with different activities. These stickers are responsive and generate augmented reality animations on the mobile app. It is an educative experience made for children to understand the turtle's migration process in the mediterranean sea and the dangers they're facing.
My work consisted in designing the mobile application used to interact with the system.
- Once again, this app is designed to be used by young people, so interactions have to be straight-forward, assisted and intuitive, with an efficient onboarding explaining the functionalities with chapters designed to be introductions.
- In the library tab, users can visualize the stickers they collected and have additional informations about them.
- In the chapters tab, users can access the different mini-games composing the storyline of Lola.
- When a child has completed the story, he is rewarded with a medal given in real life by adult organizators taking care of the young people.
I made once again a mid-fidelity figma prototype that is fully interactible for this specific project.
You can check it out by clicking on the button below.
I also took care of...
- Creating an accessibility features document for Water Screen, because it's unique interaction principles required particular attention on the matter.
- Writing playtests scenarios for Carnet Magique and Water Screen that the team could use later on during testing phases.
- Writing user stories for the two projects, detailing the experience in a user-centered way.
- Making a sketch of the Water Screen physical installation with scales.
- Documenting all of my work along the way.
You can check out all of the other documents I produced during my internship at La Méduse Violette by clicking on the button below.
Results
- I was able to help the team have a better vision of the project they are currently developping and received very positive feedbacks from them regarding my contribution.
- The team now has documentation and prototypes to help them continue the development of their projects in a user-centered way, also taking into account accessibility principles.
- Water Screen and Carnet Magique are still in development and approaching testing phase.
Takeaways
- Olivia Papini, the CEO of La Méduse Violette completely trusted me to do my job and let me work in total autonomy, allowing me to handle my own planning.
- The downside of this was that I didn't have an experienced hierarchy to refer to, but I still really enjoyed working with total freedom with the trust of a whole welcoming team.
- This internship allowed me to develop my knowledge of Figma as a prototyping tool a LOT. I now feel confident with the ways i can produce interactive prototypes using this software.