Career Day
Articulate Storyline
YEAR 2023
Master's of Social Work
University of North Carolina CharlotteCareer Day is an interactive instructional game designed to prompt students in the Master’s of Social Work degree to investigate the relationship between specializations in social work and the nine competencies.
This project was completed as part of my capstone internship with the Center for Teaching & Learning at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte.
Landing Page
Personalized Dialogue
Introducing learners to the game play interface.
User Experience Design
As Jakob’s Law states, our users spend their time on other sites, and in our primary users case, in other games. This style and button placement is purposefully similar locations to other games. The simple two-dimensional illustration style mimics the cartoons and games our target audience grew up with. The simple “flash-games” interactions provoke a feeling of nostalgia.
The design attempts to be aesthetically appealing, as the Aesthetic-Usability Effect reminds us, users believe that visually appealing designs are more usable. Leaning on The University of North Carolina - Charlotte’s brand colors, the “Greene County Career Fair” has green table cloths and beige buttons to blend into the learning management system (LMS).
Learners selects characters to be prompted with questions to advance the game. Learners select objects in the scene to access resources related to the sector of social work and the nine competencies of social work. The answer is located with a different resource at each career fair booth.
Instructional Design
Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia were used as guidelines making design design decisions. Some examples include:
The Signaling Principle states users learn best when they are shown exactly what to pay attention to on the screen. With the check in and snack bar acting as a tutorial phase, users quickly learn to navigate the experience while preparing for the forthcoming puzzles.
The Coherence Principle states users learn best when extraneous, distracting material is not included. Content was narrowed to the required elements to solve puzzles and career fair tables will be simple without clickable graphics to prevent confusion.
The Spatial Contiguity Principle emphasizes the importance of presenting related information in close proximity to each other. In the context of Career Day, this means placing clues or puzzles related to a specific learning objective in the same areas of the game for each puzzle.
Gamification of education is a popular trend in which game mechanics and elements are used to enhance the learning experience. Rewards play a crucial role in this process, as they provide a sense of accomplishment and motivation to the learners. In the context of Career Day, the user progresses through the career fair booths, answering the social worker’s questions correctly, they are awarded “righting utensils” Once a user collects 7 “righting utensils” the learner is able to become a social worker. The reward system is designed to encourage users to advance though the tables and provides motivation to continue their progress towards mastery of the learning objective.
“Righting utensils,” which take the appearance of pens, act as badges or awards. They create a gamified goal for learners to achieve and create motivation for learners to meet this goal. As the user progresses through the tables, answering the social worker’s questions correctly, they are awarded “righting utensils” Once a user collects 7 “righting utensils” the learner is able to become a social worker.
User Experience Design
The Peak-End Rule states that users judge an experience largely based on how they feel at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
This learning experience aims to design excitement and nostalgia with a purposeful peak at the 75% marker of the game as well as excellent final moments. This allows users to remember this moment, over the frustration of answering questions or other negative experiences they may have had with the learning experience.
The peak of the game comes after a student correctly solves the school social worker’s puzzle.
When the user reaches the fourth booth, school social worker, a loud crashing noise can be heard and a super villain appears. “The Oppressor,” as the super villain calls himself, has a goal to rid the world of social workers and all the good that they do. The school social worker reminds you to finish collecting 7 pens, become a social worker, and help take down the oppressor.