Game Installation and Onboarding

The onboarding process for Type 1 diabetes breaks every rule for how to design a good onboarding process for a video game. 

Game Design Rules: First Time User Experience

Hundreds of high-quality new games launch into App Stores every week. In this highly-competitive atmosphere, the game “onboarding” experience is crucial to success.  It is critical that when introducing a player to a new game, this onboarding experience be as rewarding and captivating as possible. 

This is often done by giving the player an ‘early win’ - helping them experience the reward of the game within the first few interactions. It is important that the elements of this First Time User Experience (FTUE) be simple and clearly understandable to the user.

I’m driving home from work one day and my wife calls: 

“[Our middle daughter] has Type 1 diabetes. Her blood sugar is over 500. Meet me at the house. We need to take her to the ER.”

My middle daughter, had just turned 5 years old. 

The game starts in the “Lose State”. You don’t know what a blood sugar of 576 even means, or an A1C of 8.5, but what you do know is that these scores are really important to gameplay and that your score already SUCKS.

This aspect, however, is actually fixable. More on that in the future...