SDG 16- Peace, justice and strong institutions
This includes the reduction of violence and murder, ending violence and abuse against children, reduction of corruption in government, dealing with organised crime, setting up functional and responsible institutions, improving the ability for geopolitical participation of developing nations, and providing public access to information.
I chose this SDG for my project because it is a subject which children may not know much about, but will be important for them to be knowledgeable of in the future, as they become of voting age, and it will provide a design challenge to make such a complex topic understandable for a primary school audience.
For initial research of the SDG project, I researched the mobile app Paladin. It allows users to learn about history by scrolling through information cards, in short lessons from 5-10 minutes. At the end of each lesson the user is given a quick recap followed by a short interactive test, gamifying the learning process, which creates a higher level of user engagement and strengthening memory of the information read. Activities include card sorting, swiping left or right on a statement if it it true or false and multiple choice questions. The tone of voice is in the form of a story, with illustrations and voice over alongside, further enhancing the user’s engagement. With each lesson, the user earns a digital card with a character in the story, incentivising them to keep learning through a reward scheme. There are also pop up buttons which allow additional information to be displayed if the user is interested in the topic.
Testing this app myself, I found it to be extremely engaging, even for my demographic of a young adult, but the light hearted tone of voice and hand drawn illustrations would not be remiss in a platform for young children. The process of learning is also suitable for all ages, but may be especially effective for young children who do not have the attention span of a developed adult.
Another similar smartphone app I researched was Duolingo. Its format is slightly different from Paladin, by which the user learns through testing primarily, instead of the testing being used as reinforcement, but the games used for testing are very similar. Both of these approaches helped me retain information when I tested the apps, but I believe each approach is more effective for their respective topics, as language is learnt piece by piece, where history is made up of pure information which must be retained. With my project, I aim to teach children about what is happening in the world and how they can help with it in their lives, I feel the approach Paladin takes will be more useful for my app.
On the back of this lecture I read Jakob Nielsen’s article about the 10 Usability Heuristics. In my opinion, all of these heuristics boil down to the same idea of saving the user’s time, but solve different issues which may cause hassle for the user. One which I find interesting is matching the languages and interactions in the digital and real world. I feel when we use well designed digital products we take for granted that we already know how to use them, in my opinion, this is because they mirror what we are already used to in our real lives.
This then led me to an article by Katie Sherwin about Natural Mapping. An example shown in the article was Apple’s ability to arrange dual monitors digitally as they are placed in real life, allowing the user to easily move the cursor between them without becoming confused.
Another example was the brightness and volume sliders on mobile phones, which is typically moved upwards to make the screen brighter or device play louder, as higher means a greater amount. I found this extremely interesting, as it is something I never noticed when using my phone every day, and never once had an issue using, due to the subconscious links formed by this design choice.