The Lending Hearts mobile app is an online community for kids and teens in the Lending Hearts community to encourage creativity and companionship. Our client, Lending Hearts, provides support to children with cancer and in remission and their families by conducting special monthly outings and activities, and wanted an online platform through which the kids could stay connected when they were apart or unable to attend events. As our project this semester was the start of a multi-year programme, we were tasked to create a framework that could be built upon and expanded in the future while focusing on the core values of creativity and companionship that resonated with our client and the Lending Hearts mission.
During the semester, we created a space-themed community where players were one of many planets orbiting the Lending Hearts star. Approved players in the Lending Hearts community would log in to the app and be able to customise their personal planet and play mini games in the galaxy. By playing mini games, players earn coins that they use to make wishes at the wishing volcano on the Lending Hearts star. Once the community goal of a certain number of wishes is reached, the wishing volcano grants all players more items with which to customise their planet. Players are also able to view Lending Hearts news on the Lending Hearts star, and view others’ planets as well as send items as gifts to other players.
While we have built the core of our experience (the Lending Hearts galaxy with customisable planets, login system and Lending Hearts star) and the main interaction loop (community goal of wishing at the wishing volcano with coins from playing mini games, in order to unlock more items for customisation), future expansions to the Lending Hearts galaxy may include more mini games and places to explore and more customisation options and/or items for planets. There could also be additional social features to interact with other players, and more integration with excursions and events. Additionally, we focused our mini game design on the target demographic of 8-11 year olds, the majority of the Lending Hearts community, future mini games or experiences can serve other age ranges or even target families or parents.
We have learned a lot from our first project semester and are happy and grateful to have had the opportunity to create something that can make a difference in the lives of kids and families.
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