Prototype for Educational App on Antarctica
Graduate level research project. Designing a public outreach educational app for students. Specific goal was to increase awareness of and facilitate learning earth science, and earth-science related topics as this are of learning is significantly lower than other areas of science in this region.
Instead of creating an in-depth app on earth science, I decided to take it another route. Lets make an app on a topic a lot of students find interesting, and include earth science topics in it.
Below shows several levels of the design process before getting to the final prototype at the bottom.
Test of interactive content in InDesign. The opening screen is a video of different geographical locations around antarctica. The text and images in the second and third images are just content pulled from the net used as placeholders for the test.
First prototype, exported and tested as a flash file.
First Row:
The opening begins with a video showing different geography, and a penguin that swims unto the screen. The menu screen also features a map with interactive hotspots that you can click on. Clicking any spot will dim everything else and pop up information about that location with an option to learn more about it.
Second Row:
Different sections of the app, showing consistent design. Each section will have a sub-menu in the white box that leads to more specific information.
First prototype (with minor adjustments) now allows both landscape and portrait layouts. Content exported and transferred to an iPad 2 to test features on the actual device instead of just the flash simulation.
Second version of the prototype. Opening video removed due to increased file size. There were considerations to host the video online, but then that eats into bandwidth and could be problematic for schools depending on no cellular connection, or video hosting sites being blocked and/or filtered. In addition, after you see the video once, does it really serve a purpose, or is it just another click before you get to the content?
Minor adjustments to menu. Locations removed from main map, instead moved to the geography section. Each menu option now has a little splash screen that provides more information before actually progressing to that section.
The menu screen was also made to look more sleek and better aligned with current design trends for kids apps. The graphics before were aesthetic for perhaps an older audience, but would probably not connect well with kids. The name of the app is now taken, but at the time of original conception and testing, it wasn't.
Screenshots below show different sections of the content. Interactive content included overlays and quizzes.
Below are screen captures from different sections. Some graphics are completely custom, some are creative commons, some are modified creative commons content, and some had to be created to match pre-existing but incomplete creative commons content.
Below is all the custom or modified graphics for this project. This does not include graphics that were public domain or creative commons that required no modification, only those that did.
I eventually decided to scrap the project in its current form. It was not 100% complete, but was at a showable point with a respectable amount of content. The app was well received by pretty much everyone that saw it. However, I was not content with it.
As I got further into the project, I began to feel more like I was just creating an interactive text book and not something students would actually want to use. I would like to continue the project at another point in time, but I feel I need to rethink the way students will actually interact with the content. The design needs to reflect methods of interaction that students will not only benefit from, but that they'll actually choose to use.
In its current form, I can not say that I believe this is the case.
I am considering studying game design, and then looking into how similar concepts could be embedded into a game's designs and mechanics, in a way that facilitates learning and is actually fun- not to be confused with just tacking questions and quizzes unto a weak game engine or design.