Virtual Student Union + Sustainable Planet simulation game | 1 of 16 projects selected by Microsoft for Hackathon 2021
Problem: We’re facing challenges in the coming decades humankind has never faced before. Where there seems to be a real focus on sustainable building these days, equally critical issues of collapsing food chains, ecosystem destruction, bio-diversity loss, and acidification of our oceans are not getting the attention they should.
Solution: Virtual online competitive gaming, where teams of students worldwide together build future societies in a time of climate change through sustainable economic development. Tasked with building new communities in regions of the world which approximate the climate, resources, infrastructure and population density of the regions they currently live in, Sustainable Planet is played as part of a semester long course in classrooms. It functions as an experiential-education training platform.
User Research
Affinity mapping and user requirements were documented based on user interviews, A/B preference testing, and surveys.
Comparisons were drawn amongst teachers and administrators, and similarities and differences were taken into account for future design work.
Competitive Analysis: Google Classroom
Due to circumstances surrounding COVID-19, classrooms around the world were forced into a system somewhat new and unfamiliar to them.
Google Classroom is the preferred product, but it had SWOT to be analyzed, and thus improved upon.
IA & Wireframes
Mapping and responsive ideation sketching
Iconography
preliminary icon set for app functionality
Our work is in progress…
Virtual Student Union is an effort to educate people young and old on the importance of combating climate change to the best of our ability.
Students have the power to collaborate with peers worldwide in project-based inquiry, and to rethink efforts to save local communities and ecosystems from drastic, life-threatening outcomes.
Energime University and the Virtual Student Union are attempting the innovative, but massive task of rethinking science and sustainability education in schools, while providing educators and school districts with the resources and content they need to revitalize their outdated curriculum.
We’re working to create an authentic, gamified experience, with real-world training for future scientific and environmental endeavors. Young people should be empowered and increasingly responsible for saving our planet.