NUM is a challenging and addictive math game that I worked on as a side project with my friend. He developed the app while I am responsible for all the design-related tasks such as designing the user interface, prototyping the animations, create the style of the app, draw the illustrations and more.
The main goal of this game is to make math fun. Unlike many of the typical school assignments students received, we put our focus on training people’s basic mental calculation skills because we believe this is the most useful skill children and adults can utilize in their daily lives.
How the game works is the player has to figure out what makes the result number from the given set of numbers like this example below.
Intuitive Gameplay
Giving the ability for players to solve the math problem however they like is crucial because everyone thinks differently that is why when designing the gameplay screen, I made sure we have an intuitive way of letting the players use different result number to achieve the solution just like this example on the left.
The home screen
One of the main purposes of the home screen besides providing clear direction on where the user should navigate to is provide a clear message on what the game is about. In our case, NUM is a simple and playful math game. I also kept in mind that having a bigger screen doesn’t mean scaling up images but instead having more content.
The Tutorial Flow
In my opinion the best way to learn is by doing it so I decided to head in that direction when designing the tutorial flow of NUM. The tutorial of NUM shows and ask players to perform tasks in order to let them learn the game faster play actually playing it. The game also start right after the player finishes the tutorial that makes the transition from tutorial to actual game playing as seamless as possible. Below is a video of the tutorial flow.
More designs
Thank you for your time, if you’re interested in NUM below are the links where you can learn more about it :)
Bonus
Here are some images on how we decided to make an Apple Watch app when it was announced, we learnt a lot about designing and building a watch app for the series 0 watch where there are many constraints. That was also my first time designing on a wearable medium. The 3rd image is us testing a new feature on NUM’s iPad app where it allows 2 players to compete how fast they can solve the math problem.
