The Challenge: This particular challenge was somewhat different other projects I typically run as I was not the original product designer/owner for this app. Rather, I inherited this project once another team had run into some difficultly with the game’s feature designs and scope. Furthermore, there were augmented reality features for the product that had yet to be designed and were scheduled for the final product. I needed to amend the design, get the project back on track and ensure that production could make way for the AR features intended for the final iteration.

The Discovery: Our partner in this challenge was DHX/Wildbrain who had taken notice of our products, especially as Biba had just freshly entered into the UK market. They were asking for:

• An app that was 100% faithful to the original Teletubbies property with no ‘coloring outside the lines’ what-so-ever. This would mean strict constraints on asset generation.

• Parent-Child interaction that was 100% safe and did not encourage risk-taking. This was a product that was strictly for the K/Pre-K audience and would require a light touch on interactions.

• Sparing, but allowable use of the new Tiddlytubbies characters.

While the game project I inherited was already abiding by most of these standards, a number of designs up until that point had been rejected and required remediation. This was my first task.

Remedying the designs for children that were K to Pre-K turned out to be eminently achievable with all assets created to date. Instructions were made to be quite simple for parents to read to their children in large text. Interactions were limited to one per screen and were also large and had full-screen payoffs to demonstrate clear rewards for a child’s inputs. On the physical interaction side, we made some equipment interactions more flexible, with ‘tagging’ or ‘going to’ the equipment being viable modes of mission-completion. For safety’s sake, we also omitted the inclusion of the swing entirely from the game’s selectable items to eliminate the possibility of the game making an unsafe request of the child.

Augmented Reality: With scope and timing having been quickly re-stabilized on the core product side, the AR feature ended up being the big next challenge. We had originally looked at the prospect of creating a Teletubbies ‘looking glass’ that could appear on the playground and allow parents and children to look through and see the world of the Teletubbies, my 3D team and I actually decided to ramp the concept up a bit, as we were confident we could add more value to the experience with the time we had remaining.

Instead, we decided to create a ‘Portal AR’ experience where families could actually walk right into the Teletubbies Home Dome and partake in some simple interactions within. Within the Home Dome, children would be able to visit the Tiddlytubbies nursery, change the environment from day to night, look out the window into the Teletubbies world and also review their toy collection, collected as rewards from gameplay.

The AR component would require us to operate in lock-step with the stakeholders at DHX however as needed to make sure that the architecture of this entire space was incredibly accurate and did not deviate from the original.