MyWorld is an educational game designed to teach teens "internet literacy", including best practives and safety precautions when surfing the net. It is currently in use by the Canadian Schoolboard , primarlily in Eastern Canada.
CDM Industry Project with MediaSmarts
- Art Lead
- UI/UX Lead
- Artist
Awarded in "Highly Commended" Category of 2011 MEDEA Awards
"My Learning Strategies Students loved it. They found it very interactive and it asked high level questions and delves deep into the subject of media and internet literacy. Very cool graphics and navigation."
- Teacher, Ottawa Carleton District School Board, Ontario
"My students thought it was great – so did I! They were really into all the aspects of the site and got the hang of it really quickly. It lent itself to great classroom discussions before and after using it. "
- Teacher, Ottawa Carleton District School Board, Ontario
"MyWorld exceeded all of my expectations and the students loved it."
-Teacher, Nova Scotia
My Role: UX and Art Direction to Simulate a Teen's Real Life Experience Online, in a Somehow Engaging Manner
My role for MyWorld was to create a user experience and art direction to effectively deliver a game design written by our client, MediaSmarts', in-house writer. We were given set of instructions on certain experiences student players were meant to go through, such as posting to Facebook, or researching a topic online. In order to deliver such experiences, I decided to create the look and feel of a real operating system, but with a colourful and stylish overhaul to keep the (somewhat dry and everyday) subject matter as appealing as possible to the target audience. I decided to create sub-environments within the main OS environment based on pun take-offs on the real-world equivalents we were meant to be simulating, such as Facebook and Google. Thus were born 'Space Face' and 'Googolplex'.
After the Initial Phase, the Client Hired a Co-Worker Programmer* and Me to Bring the Game to Launch, and We Did
To create a follow-up to their successful Passport to the Internet educational game for teens concerning digital literacy, the non-profit MediaSmarts Organization approached the Centre for Digital Media to hire one of their student groups. As my first UX and art-direction role on a project of this size, I was extremely fortunate to please the client contact with my first prototype, and then iterating upon that to produce a sleek and refined, fully realized version of the original idea. The client was so pleased with the work from myself, the artist, and a co-worker*, the coder, that they opted to hire us two over the summer to complete the project. I completed my work by the end of summer, and the programmer was hired on contract for a few months to complete it entirely. The game was sold to the Canadian schoolboard later that year.
VISIT THE GAME PAGE!
* Jeunessa Cheng, now a programmer at Kabam