COAST GHOSTS
My Roles: UX Researcher, Character & Background Artist
Team: Andrew Lin, Atitaya Kaewjinda, Katherine Dusanic, Spiro Tsaggaris, Tanae Burton
Timeline: 2 Months
Team: Andrew Lin, Atitaya Kaewjinda, Katherine Dusanic, Spiro Tsaggaris, Tanae Burton
Timeline: 2 Months
My Toolbox/Process
Consult Stakeholders
Prototype
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Competitive Research
Data Analyzation
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Brainstorm
Game Development
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Planning
Presenting
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User Research
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“Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG), better known as “ghost gear” is any fishing gear that is abandoned, lost or discarded in marine environments…. Fishing gear is designed to trap marine organisms, and it can continue to do so long after the gear is lost or discarded in the ocean. When lost fishing gear keeps catching fish after its intended lifespan, it is called “ghost fishing”. -Ocean Conservancy 
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PromptMy team, amongst others, was approached by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to find a creative way to bring awareness to issues plaguing our oceans. There are various pollutions [ex. plastics, oils, paper, and old fishing gear (Ghost Gear)] endangering marine environments, impeding on the livelihood of our oceanic species. Many aquatic animals have had to adjust to living amongst trash, and are at times negatively impacted by it's presence. Food sources, visibility, and environment has taken a hit and the lives impacted are bearing the brunt of having to navigate challenging issues out of their control.
Competitive Research We were given free range on how to best bring awareness to the issue, but we wanted to see what approaches were already taken by competitor organizations. From our research we discovered that multiple companies/sources relied mostly on written reports and articles with minimal use of videos or interactive content. During our initial time of research we did find that the Global Ghost Gear Initiative did introduce a oceanic game to explain the consequences of ghost gear pollutants. However, upon a return inspection a short time later the game was removed.
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User Research
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We wanted to create a game that would engage users, especially kids of the varying ages that the WWF would provide programs for. So this meant getting a good idea of what types of games kids enjoyed. Fortunately we had access to a small sample size of children between the ages of 5 and 8 due to the current occupation of a team member.
This being an informal approach we told each student that we wanted to help improve the health of our oceans but wanted to find a cool way to get it done. We utilized 3-6 research questions and approached our "participants" during pickup times at the end of the day. *We did receive verbal approval from the student's parents, and each student was questioned with a parent present. |
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Brainstorming/Planning
Fun
Easy
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Animals
Swimming
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From the informal research gathered we found a few key insights that participants valued in and educational aquatic game:
Participants expressed that they wanted to feel like they were underwater and loved the idea seeing cute animals. Once we identified a general idea of what would be enjoyable we still had to narrow down a genre, game goal, story, setting, and what we wanted the game to look like. Game genre- We looked at two game styles: Side scroller and story games. Story game [A game play style of players just clicking through a story]-We thought about using multiple images where a player can click through the story and learn about ghost gear and how they could help prevent it. However, that didn't feel very engaging. Side scroller [A side scroller is a type of video game where a side-view camera angle is used for action viewing. -Technopedia]- This we thought would give the player the most control of the adventure in the game, but it called for creating a main character that they could easily impose themselves on to fulfill the goal of the game. We ultimately selected this style do to it's quicker turn around with iterative design and it's easy play style. |
Story, game goal, setting, character-
We wanted an engaging story to give the player a good understanding of what the goal of the game would be. To do this, we looked at some educational programming for children to get a grasp of story style and what could actually hold a younger audiences' attention. From our research we decided we would have the player looking for ghost gear in the water and, after thinking about how we could have a human stay underwater for a significant amount of time, we decided to have our story revolve around a scuba diving team.
Regarding setting, we wanted a colorful coral reef that would be eye catching when articulated in a two dimensional style.
We looked at the following photos for reference:
We wanted an engaging story to give the player a good understanding of what the goal of the game would be. To do this, we looked at some educational programming for children to get a grasp of story style and what could actually hold a younger audiences' attention. From our research we decided we would have the player looking for ghost gear in the water and, after thinking about how we could have a human stay underwater for a significant amount of time, we decided to have our story revolve around a scuba diving team.
Regarding setting, we wanted a colorful coral reef that would be eye catching when articulated in a two dimensional style.
We looked at the following photos for reference:
Character and Background Mockups
Completed Backgrounds
For the backgrounds I really wanted to utilize visually aesthetically pleasing elements to draw gamers in. I also wanted to emulate the beauty of underwater views as much as possible. I utilized photos of coral reefs however the cluttered natural settings might be a bit distracting for younger audiences; So I minimized the complexity of the reef then slowly built up the layers to create depth.
I wanted to show a diverse crew to try and help different demographics of people feel represented.
Prototype/Game Development
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With a general idea of what we wanted we presented our thoughts to our stakeholders. They alerted us that our target audience was too small and that we needed to make it for a wider audience. To accommodate this we added a few more complexities to the game and upped the graphics to more closely resemble real life.
With this new feedback we developed our final game prototype titled "Coast Ghosts," accompanied with a game design document. This document helped to better explain the game's goal and how it will benefit the concept of tackling Ghost Gear. Personal Contributions-
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Reception
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After presenting this concept to the WWF we received praise for it's design and fun take on tackling a not so fun issue. Once the game was launched we shared the link which allowed peers and our stakeholders to provide hands on constructive feedback.
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Limitations |
Future Work |
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