About this project

Design thinking and process

The idea came to me pretty randomly. I came across an advertisement of reusable face masks online shop (which is pretty expensive per pack). Connecting this back to a face mask-making Facebook group last semester at Alyssa's class, I think it would be interesting to use games to teach people how to make reusable face masks using the existing materials they have at-home such as old T-shirts or unused cloth. In order to make this impactful, I came up with the idea of donating one surgical mask to India every time when the user completes and submits their mask - this is a game that goes beyond the actual making process, but more like make changes to people who are in need.

Design rationales

Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML)

The design of this project follows a number of Mayer’s CTML design principles and visual design principles in order to create a clean and effective design to reduce the extraneous load and maximize germane load when users are using the app. Here is a list of CTML principles I used for this prototype:

• Segmenting Principle: humans learn best when information is presented in segments, rather than one long continuous stream.

  • The entire process is broken into steps (some are longer, some are shorter), and each stage of the process is presented in a different color (measuring, cutting, sewing, and attaching the elastic bends)

• Spatial Contiguity Principle: humans learn best when relevant text and visuals are physically close together.

  • The instructions and the visuals are right next to each other, which minimize the extra work players need to do while playing the game

• Temporal Contiguity Principle: humans learn best when corresponding words and visuals are presented together

  • The visual contents of the mask-making process resonate with the corresponding instructions on the left side that they show up together at the same time

Constructionism (Seymour Papert): Learn by doing

Constructionism is a constructivist learning theory that is promoted by Seymour Papert. Papert believed students learn best by making tangible objects through authentic, real-life learning opportunities that allow for a guided, collaborative process that incorporates peer feedback.

"Learn by doing" is the core idea of Constructionism that Papert brought up, which also reflects in instructional design on the promotion of learning through designing and sharing within a collaborative environment and peers. Even though the mask made in the game is not a product that people can wear, the process is a replication of what you can do in real life. From playing this face mask-making game, players learn how to adopt this into real-life situations by making real digital face masks; this also creates a channel for sharing the knowledge to other people by presenting the face masks to others.

Behaviorism: motivations

The behavioral learning theory focuses on looking for learner motivations as a way to enhance learning outcomes. explicit rewarding system existing in the game as the positive reinforcement, however, the opportunity of donating one surgical mask to India can be a reward for the users (that they are actually doing something meaningful to people in need by making this “digital mask”). This can also be considered as an extrinsic motivation that learners would actually end up doing something meaningful for people in need, instead of just making a digital face mask.

Gamification of learning

Gamification is becoming increasingly used in educational settings for a number of reasons. Students learn best when they are also having fun. It is the use of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts - in this game, there is intentionally not scored, but it's like a level-up system when it comes to step-by-step instruction (you can only move forward if you are doing this step correctly). The hands-on experiences came to reality when the players need to move them curses when it comes to sewing and flipping over, which adds some interactivity and fun to the experience.

Limitations and future work

• Better illustration: The illustration isn't something I was envisioning at first. I would like to invite an illustrator who can actually draw out how the cloth/mask looks like on each step for a better visual representation

• Micro-animations: I would like to show more animations when sewing, folding, and other actions are happening. They should give the players immediate visual feedback and displaying changes more clearly.

• Better text instructions: usability testing might be needed to test out if the text instructions are clear enough for the users to understand what is happening or what to do the next.