Overview
Our team is made up of six second year students. Eva Chang producer, Anna Kim narrative and level designer, Lawrence Luo 3D artist, Regina Xia 3D artist, Yawen Xiao UIUX designer, and Tyler Yang programmer. Charles Johnson and Heather Kelley are our project instructors.
Our client is the World Shoe Fund, a social enterprise focused on improving global health by distributing shoes to those in need, particularly in regions where access to footwear is limited. The organization’s mission is to combat health risks associated with being shoeless, such as infections and injuries, by providing durable and practical shoes to vulnerable populations. In addition to providing footwear, the World Shoe Fund emphasizes promoting hygiene education to encourage recipients to adopt and maintain hygienic behaviors in their everyday lives through their Wash and Wear program.
The World Shoe Fund tasked us with creating a transformational game designed to engage young people, specifically students aged 10 to 14 years old. Our goal was to promote the importance of good hygiene and offer guidance for achieving it through an Android tablet. The team designed a game called Hygiene Hero Cup, a 3D world that features three mini-games teaching handwashing, footwashing, and shoe-wearing. The game’s narrative revolves around a sports competition, and the mini-games use reinforcement and visualizations to deliver the educational goals.
To ensure the game was culturally and demographically relevant, we conducted extensive research and made deliberate design choices. We also had the opportunity to travel to Ghana for in-person playtesting with our target audience. Beyond the game, the team developed an accompanying lesson plan to turn the game into a mini hygiene workshop. Insights from these workshops confirmed that the game met its transformational goal, showing a significant day-one impact.
What went well
The team all shared the same goal to create a game that can make an impact. This vision helped us design the game in a harmonious way and we are all appreciative of what the team had produced at the end.
Conducting playtests with the target audience was a major milestone. It validated our design decisions and provided invaluable feedback for final iterations. The team initially planned the playtest in Rwanda, however, things changed beyond our control and we had to change our destination. The change of plan still manages to go well as the team shows adaptability to changes.
The accompanying lesson plan enhanced the game’s impact by turning it into an interactive hygiene workshop, reinforcing the educational goals. The team had the opportunity to test the game for two days. In between, the team went back to work. We made changes to the game according to what we saw in the playtest. We also made changes to the questionnaire as we found out that the first version wasn’t providing enough data for us to prove our game works. The changes were a good step for us and show that our game made its impact.
What could have been better
As mentioned, the team is designed for a unique demographic as our main target audience are located in the African continent. It was hard for us to find the right sources to understand the context better in early stages, and it was also hard for the team to test the game for early iterations. Having the chances to get in touch with the target audience in the early stages of the project could indeed help our development to be more centered around the users and to test out its educational impact sooner.
Another hard part of the project was to maintain the scope. The team had a different deadline than others as we headed to Ghana for playtesting at Week 12, meaning that we should have a relatively completed build before that. However, during the development phase, the team spent more time than expected on game design to make sure the goal is there, compressing our art and game programming time length. The team could have followed the schedule more strictly to make the development smoother.
Lessons learned and conclusion
The design and development process of this project has been a lesson for us. It was the first time for the team to work on a transformational project designed for a specific demographic. Transformational games have a slightly different game design process than regular games, as the game has to reach its impact of transformation. We have to constantly make sure that our game is doing its goal enough and our design helped achieve the goal.
Our client has been really supportive throughout the entire process and gave us much resources to get into the research of the transformation goal. Our client loves the final game and is looking for more potential collaborations across different organizations. They are also bringing Hygiene Hero Cup to their future distributions and Wash and Wear program. We are also discussing the possibility for the game to be released publicly so that students around the world can all have a chance to interact with the game. This journey has been incredible—from turning our ideas into a game to seeing its impact reach across the world. Watching the Hygiene Hero Cup come to life and inspire change has been a truly rewarding experience for the team. We are excited to hear more about how the Hygiene Hero Cup goes out into the world.