Teeth Guardian is an interactive game app designed for kids aged 3-5 to develop proper tooth-brushing habits. The app uses a 3-minute cartoon-style game and gamification of daily brushing tasks to make learning fun and effective. Designed under the guidance of dental professionals, the app was planned to be developed in the future.
Many children resist toothbrushing due to its repetitive and often uncomfortable nature. The mundane task fails to engage kids, resulting in sporadic participation and inadequate cleaning, making it difficult for them to maintain consistent and effective oral hygiene habits.
By turning each brushing session becomes an game adventure and keeping the excitement alive through daily challenges and rewards, it is more possible to maintain children’s interest in their oral health over the long term.
Teeth Guardian is a tooth-brushing game to teach kids from 3-5 brushing method and develop daily brushing habits.
The game can develop a long-term brushing habit by setting daily tasks for kids to complete.
• 2 brushing tasks everyday(morning & night);
• Morning task opens from 7am to 10am;
• Night task opens from 7pm to 9pm;
The game transforms oral health into a fun, cartoon style to capture children's interests. By breaking down the brushing task into steps, it provides clear instructions at the start of each session, with animations to teach proper brushing techniques.
• Kids brush with the "guardians" to eliminate oral bacteria, making the goal clear and engaging.
• Age-appropriate character design keeps kids focused and entertained.
• Animated instructions help children understand the brushing process easily.
The users can use the stars to unlock new guardians, decorations and powerful weapons.
A brushing session is devided into 6 sessions. When a session starts, it shows the posistion of the teeth to brush.
There is a tooth brushing animation at the bottom of the game interface, which corresponds to the action of brushing teeth.
As finishing a brushing task, the user can get a star as a reward.
Secondary research(2021)
58.7% of children suffer from dental caries, and similarly, most dental visits are for treatment rather than prevention.
A staggering 90.1% of parents do not supervise their children's daily brushing.
Nearly 76% of children brush their teeth less often than the recommended twice daily.
Effective dental caries prevention methods are statistically proven (P-value < 0.05).
Interview
Interviews included 5 parents and a director of the Guanghua Stomatological Hospital, Guangzhou, China. The interviews mainly focus on the development and difficulties of developing tooth brushing habits.
Kids cannot concentrate and they resist while being asked to brushing;
Parents found difficult to form their kids a long-term tooth-brushing habits;
While some educational methods such as storytelling and making things interesting do not always interest every child, brushing the teeth itself is displeasing to the child；
Fear becomes a kind of resistance, which may come from the taste of toothpaste, the feel of the toothbrush, or the pressure of parents or even the fear of the dentists.
Stakeholder Map
In the early stages of the design process, I developed a stakeholder map — not only illustrated the primary users, but also depicted the secondary stakeholders. This tool proved immensely valuable during the later stages of collaboration, as all involved parties acknowledged its significant contribution to the project's success.
Persona
Before designing the app, I first made various styles that would both appeal to young children and align with the theme of characters. This is one of the most important part in this product, so I also took into consideration the diverse backgrounds of children across different genders, personalities, and cultures to appeal inclusive experience.
In the user test, tester showed frustrations to a bunch of UI buttons. Thus I changed the start button from a text button to a "Play" button, the UI of the day&night section and delete some complex content.
I focused on creating tasks for these two distinct time periods, tailoring the game's styles for day and night. After a child completes a tooth-brushing session in the game, the display will indicate 'completed’, allowing parents to supervise and assist as needed.
I found kids are so addicted to the characters so they would tap again and again. The earlier design starts the game after tap the characters. With a more clear state and interaction, user can choose their character and click the "Ready" button to start the game, this move avoided mistakes.
There were no stops between each steps and clear step intrustions originally, tests showed misunderstandings and easily forgot what to do. Firstly, I added stops for kids to understand what is the next step. Secondly, the countdown is changed from a bar to only show a 3-second countdown.
The test revealed that the center of the screen is the main focal point, with testers often attempting to click in this area. By this, the button was moved to the center.
Testers tended to overlook information that was not centrally located. As a result, the purchase option button has been repositioned to a more prominent central place to capture their attention more effectively.
