GOOGLE: HEADED SOUTH
A flying adventure using air gestures
This project was about exploring and releasing a gaming experience using Motion Sense, a new technology embedded in the Pixel 4 smartphone, enabling users to perform “air gestures” to interact with the device.
We started off by creating a set of project pillars to guide the overall design vision, we realized it was important to build a friendly enjoyable game for the target group, but also to make sure that the game could teach the players about the technology.
After this we kicked off a very wide concepting phase that explored isolated game mechanics and how these could work and feel using motion sense. We explored how it would feel to jump, shoot, rotate, push, fly, etc., using the technology.
If it didn’t feel right, it didn’t make the cut.
We quickly went from ideation to prototyping and built 27 different prototypes. We narrowed these down to 3, and after some more experimenting we ended up with the concept of controlling the movements of a bird flying through a landscape, helping other bird while escaping a storm.
This concept aligned with the overall project goals and felt right to players after testing our prototypes.
We scaled up the idea and combined a story, progression and other game mechanics together to shape the end experience: Headed South.
The role of the first level was to gracefully teach users both how to play the game and how to use the technology.
We introduced hazards that players had to avoid using air gestures.
We made 3 different ecosystems: the forest, the desert and the jungle.
UI designs for Main Menu, Level Select and Settings.
ONBOARDING
CONTEXTUAL LEARNING
After a very rough initial playtest where we had frontloaded the onboarding on static screens, we quickly realized that everything had to be done contextually in the game. Level 1 ended up being our onboarding where players learn how to control the bird, use air gestures to mimic tricks of other birds, and our main game mechanic: “collect“ other birds by flocking with them.
THE PROBLEM OF FAMILIARITY
A big, interesting UX problem we encountered was how familiar people are to using touch and playing games on their phones. To understand the concept of air gestures you have to do something you’ve never really thought you could do before, in a context you’re familiar with. We had to watch a lot of people swiping across the screen using touch before we got the onboarding right.
ROLE & LEARNINGS
My Role.
CREATIVE DIRECTION
ART DIRECTION
GAME DESIGN
UNITY PROTOTYPING
WORKSHOPS/EXERCISES
LEVEL DESIGN
SET DRESSING
UI/UX
SFX/MUSIC
VIDEO PRODUCTION
Learnings.
DESIGNING FOR NEW TECH ON A FAMILIAR DEVICE
DESIGNING FOR TOUCH + GESTURES
OPEN WORLD VS LINEAR LEVEL DESIGN
Outcomes.
FIRST MOBILE GAME FOR MOTION SENSE
FIRST MOBILE GAME FOR GOOGLE
SHIPPED ON GOOGLE PLAY
GOOGLE PLAY RELEASE
MOBILE DESIGN OF THE YEAR 2020