We’ve created some simple slideshows to walk you through the apps design and functions. The fist slideshow gives you an idea of how to use the app, while the second shows you how to set up and manage tasks and rewards.
You can also test out our prototype for yourself, but keep in mind that some functionality is missing as this is only a prototype that shows the consept. Click anywhere on a page in the app and the clickable items should be marked in blue.
While the main purpose of Family Manager is to help families create and follow routines, it can also be a great and interactive way to teach children about economy.
The app’s game environment operates as a local economic system within the family. Think of the points as a sort of currency. The family is given a lot of control over this system, since they determine the worth of labor and rewards themselves. This means the app can adapt to different families in different situations.
In the app, points are earned by doing specific assignments. The child always knows what the assignment is and how many points it is worth. This mirrors our society where money is earned through labor.
According to consumer researcher Andrea Borch at the National Institute for Consumer Research (Norwegian: Statens institutt for forbruksforskning, SIFO) this approach is a good way to teach children the relationship between labor and money. Even if household-tasks later in life give no extrinsic rewards like a job would, in her experience the children will naturally understand the difference when they get older and also learn to value said household work as much as any other job (Noer, 2011, Stykkprisavtaler).
Willy-Tore Mørch, psychologist and professor of child and adolescent mental health at the University of Tromsø, agrees that children should be rewarded for completing assignments, but states that they should not get extrinsic rewards for good behavior. Parents should influence behavior through personal interactions and as role models. He also points out that both children and parents can learn a lot from negotiating and coming to an agreement on what sort of tasks should be done in the household (Nyquist, 2017). This is why we strongly encourage the family to set up task and rewards together, and make sure the parents also have their tasks set up in the app – not just the children.
The child can spend the points they earn on rewards predetermined by the family. The specific reward and number of points it will cost mirror a real market, where people exchange money for goods and services. Unlike most economic systems, the points don’t circulate in the system like money would. They are created by parents and are removed from the system once a reward has been redeemed.
To connect the app to real life and make it easy for the child to transition to using money later in life, one could make the points resemble money, where for example 1 point = 1 NOK or 1USD. By doing this, children who are too young to freely spend money can still learn about its value. Spending 25 points to get an ice cream from the freezer at home will later feel familiar when spending 25kr to buy an ice cream in the store. This also makes it easy for parents to set up values for rewards. For example, if the child wants to save up for a new bike, a parent can set the item up as a reward where the price in points is equal to the real life price of the bike.
Once the child is old enough to start using money freely, our app supports rewards that automatically (through third party apps such as Vipps or Paypal) transfer money to the child’s bank account. This would take some of the control away from the parents, as the child can spend their money on anything, but according to Christine Warloe, consumer economist at Nordea, children need this freedom and the responsibility that comes with it, because they learn by doing and from their mistakes. If a child experiences having to stay home while all their friends are at the cinema because they spent their allowance, they might prioritize differently next time (Jørgensen, 2012, Gi dem ansvar).
Parents may still set up other rewards in the app if they so choose. This could be a good way to help the child with savings. For example giving them the choice of adding 100 points towards a bike in our app or spend those points to get 100kr added to their bank account. This way they can clearly see what their saving goal is and how close they are to it. This goal is also separated from their everyday bank account that they use for smaller sums such as lunch money or pokémon cards. This can be considered a stepping stone towards good saving habits as an adult.
It’s important to keep in mind that the rewards do not have to be related to spending real life money. Since the family decides what the rewards are they can include things such as TV or game time. However, we strongly discourage having family time as a reward. For example, going to the park as a family is a healthy habit and should not have to be earned.
This freedom means that families struggling economically can still teach their children about the relationship between labor and reward without having to spend money.
All in all the versatility of Family Manager makes it a good learning environment for children, where they can safely explore and help build an economic system with their family. The interactive experience and its resemblance to real life economy can help develop good saving and spending habits which can continue into adulthood.
Sources:
Jørgensen, K. K. (2012, February 9). Triksene som gir deg økonomiske barn. Retrieved March 25, 2019, from https://www.nrk.no/livsstil/laer-barna-okonomi-fra-de-er-sma-1.7986586
Noer, L. K. (2011, December 14). Lommepenger etter innsats? Retrieved March 25, 2019, from https://www.nrk.no/livsstil/lommepenger-etter-innsats_-1.7915890
Nyquist, J. (2017, May 23). Hvor mye skal barna få i lommepenger? Retrieved March 25, 2019, from https://www.santanderconsumer.no/magasinet/bedre-okonomi/barna-fa-lommepenger/
To understand exactly how our users will interact with and be affected by our app, we will need to simulate some different scenarios based on what we consider our target audience. But who exactly is our target audience?
As we’ve stated in earlier blog posts, our app is targeted towards families with children. Of course the app may also be used by other groups such as students in a dorm, couples living together or individuals, but we will ignore those and focus our research on families. This will make our app easier to develop since we narrow down the target audience.
In our simulations we plan to use two very different examples of families as scenarios. To fit our target audience, both will be families with children, but with differences in the family’s size, ages and general household which may greatly affect how they end up using the Family Manager.
To make sure these were realistic users, we needed to know if children this age would have access to a cellphone. After some research into media usage by children, we found that 90-100% of children of both genders own a cellphone at the age of 10 and above, and at the age of 8-9 about 50-90% own one. This can be seen in the graph below from Medietilsynet (The Norwegian Media Authority), which shows parents reporting on whether or not their children own a cellphone.
Our next step will be to do some further research into the specific expected phone usage, activities and behavior of each individual in our scenarios, then we can start simulating!
How will we help the user make this Family Manager a part of their everyday life?
According to the well known ARSC model, it’s important for an app such as ours to have a clear end goal, something for the user to work towards. Since the app is based on the user setting personal goals, we need to clearly show the possibilities this app provides in order to inspire the user.
For a starter some clear and simple promotional material would be necessary. For ease of access the best approach would be to both have a simple promotional video, as well as a short guide with images. Both of these would show the ultimate goal of our app – to unite the family and make everyday life a little easier – so that the users know the apps potential before even downloading it.
When first setting up the app the user will get an option to “Create a routine for my family”. The user can chose to ignore this, or answer a few questions about their household and get some suggested chores based on their answers. An example of this could be telling the app that the family consists of three children and two parents, and they do not have a dishwasher. So the app will automatically set up 5 users, add the daily task of washing dishes, and set who does it each day. David and Emma on Monday, Paul and Tom on Tuesday, etc. If the user ignores this option they may still at any time browse a list of suggested tasks by category to add to their schedule, or they may skip these steps and create an empty profile from scratch.
Malone and Lepper’s theories on Intrinsically Motivating Instruction suggest that learning apps could benefit from including some sort of constant challenge and increase in difficulty as the user gets better to give a sense of progress and accomplishment. For our app this would be difficult to implement as the tasks are rather trivial and the challenge lies in maintaining routines rather than getting better at one specific skill. However we could simulate progress and accomplishment by showing statistics based on how much of each category task the user has done. For example “completed 100 cleaning-choirs”, or “did the dishes 20 times” to reach milestones that give extra rewards. This could also be accompanied by a streak-function that shows how long the user has gone without missing an important task-deadline. A streak might increase rewards earned per new completed task as well. Once a user has gone a long period maintaining their streak, the app may suggest adding additional tasks to their schedule in order to “increase difficulty”. From the beginning the app would suggest starting with few tasks and rather adding new ones when the current schedule is being maintained, to help the user grow with the app and avoid them being overwhelmed and quitting before they’ve even begun.
In conclusion we feel that our app would need to focus on showing its end goal and potential through promotional material, and that the user would need help during the start-up phase so that setting up and using the app doesn’t get overwhelming.
Based on existing psychological research done on gamification we’ve found some information that will help us motivate and keep our user base engaged. The lists below does not contain the full models, only the points we want to focus on. We will further explain how we intend to implement these into our app in future blog posts, but here’s an overview:
ARCS Model – A well know theory in the field of instructional design, and is used as framework for creating e-learning and courseware.
Malone’s Theory of Intrinsic Motivating Instructions – In the 1980s Malone did a study of various games to find out why they were fun and motivational. From this he presented a model that includes elements of Challenge, Fantasy and Curiosity
Lepper’s Instructional Design Principles for Intrinsic Motivation (researcher from Stanford University who proposed some principles in instructional design to invoke Intrinsic motivation instead of relaying on extrinsic rewards)
Family Manager 