Algo Dijital Product Design & Development

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

Algodijital.com: Launching a gamified educational website for children to learn block-based programming

Challenge

Turkey's leading education non-profit organization; Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey (TEGV); received $1,000,000 in funding from Google.org to design and deploy a nationwide education program with a digital layer to reach and teach 1 million children key 21st-century skills and mindsets.

The result was Algo Dijital. I was the solo Digital Product Manager and lead the product development from discovery, through concept, design, building, pilot, testing, and launch phases.

Founding Institution

Google.org

Role

Solo Product Management

My Team

TEGV: Managed the UX/UI design, development, and educational game design teams.

Brief

Build a digital platform to teach kids coding and algorithmic thinking through games and interactive storytelling.

Building a children-first digital experience with participatory design

As the Product Manager with a human-centered design background, I championed including the participation and imagination of the children in our design process.

During the discovery, design, and testing phases, I held various workshops with children at TEGV’s learning centers. These included choosing the story theme for the game, naming the characters, testing instruction copy for understandability, and game usability tests.

Product Components

Platform website
Introduction video to the game
A block-based digital game; with 40 levels
Accompanying offline educational curriculum for TEGV member children
Curriculum for train-the-trainer programs for TEGV volunteers
Activation events with physical games for algorithmic thinking

The Story of Yuko and Friends

I teamed up with education experts for co-design workshops and with designers for user-testing sessions with children of different ages at TEGV’s learning centers.

Among all the options, children liked the concept of ‘space exploration’ the most. With this concept, the design teams created Yuko the alien’s world.

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The game’s story is about a curious space explorer named Yuko. Yuko’s planet is destroyed during an unfortunate space crash. So Yuko starts traveling to new planets to collect new materials to build a new home planet.

During the adventures, Yuko meets new creatures and has to survive in new environments. With the help of these new friends, Yuko overcomes many obstacles, learns new coding tricks and advances to new levels.

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It was important to create gender-neutral characters. And we chose the names of the characters in a participatory manner with children.

Google Play Store Review

“My robotics teacher recommended us to play this game. It’s fun and instructive!”

iOS App Store Review

“It entertains and teaches at the same time. It's excellent!”

A new kind of block-based coding game, designed for Algo Dijital

A brand new block-based programming approach was designed and developed by our team. The algorithms created with blocks of code on the left side command Yuko to move on the game board on the right. The player's main goals in each level are collecting precious items and new creatures, avoiding dangerous obstacles, and finishing the level using the least amount of coding blocks. The shorter the code, the more efficient the algorithm!

As the levels progress so do the coding challenges. The progressive learning experience was made delightful with the storyline and by unlocking new characters and items as Yuko’s journey unfolds on different planets.

Algo Dijital’s Impact

By 2 months after launch, we surpassed our target by doubling our reach by attracting 2 million visitors to our platform.
1 million levels were played online and at TEGV learning centers by the end of our first reporting cycle.
Many children wrote their first algorithms on our platform and entered the world of programming, for free. By the end of the 3rd year, 1.45 million blocks of code were written by children.
Our digital and offline advertisement campaign reached millions nationally.
A roadshow interactive experience was created based on the game and the world we created and traveled all over the country.

There are hundreds of Let’s Play videos of Algo Dijital on YouTube, made by children and teachers!
The game was later migrated to tablets. There are many accumulated positive reviews from children and teachers!
An academic paper was published by Koç University, examining if learning to code influenced the cognitive skills of elementary school children, using Algo Dijital as a case study. The study concluded that it does improve the computational thinking of children significantly.
TEGV received more funding from other private partners to continue the program in the following years. The digital platform and the educational program are still ongoing and the impact is growing every day.

Game's world and the main characters
Platform's value propositions
Yuko reaches the end of a level with the least amount of code blocks
Platfrom statistics by year 2
A snapshot from a YouTube video of a preschooler playing and explaining her code on the 14th level of the game.