Northumberland County – Gamifying Road Safety Education for Improved Learning Retention
01. OVERVIEW
The Northumberland County Council is the local government council of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England and my team of UX Designers worked with one of the council-women to explore potential educational plans and interactive learning activities to teach road safety for children.
PROBLEM: Child pedestrian accident rates were elevated + there was no standard in-school education about road safety for kids in the county
GOALS: Deliver research and prototyped interactive learning activities that would inform future official road safety education plans and activities for children in Northumberland County
RESULTS:
Provided interactive learning activities to reinforce road safety lessons
Successfully informed future plans for official county road safety educational program
ROLE
UX Design Consultant working with a team of designers
Exploring interactive educational activities for children
TIMELINE
5 Days
May 2022
DELIVERABLES
Research Insights
Educational Plan Overview
Figma Prototypes of 3 Interactive Learning Activities
Constraints
Due to ethical constraints and extreme time limitations, we were unable to interview or test with our users (local kids) and instead relied on published research about childhood education, road safety, and in-house evaluations of our designs. We were also provided some child pedestrian and road safety statistics that had been gathered by the council-woman.
02. RESEARCH
Gamification & Reinforcement Assists Children’s Learning
Key research points from published articles and statistics collected by the local council-woman.
Determining A Base Educational Plan
Based on published research and local pedestrian accident data, we determined that the educational program should cover both primary and secondary school, for students aged 5-12. We also planned each year to connect in some way with learning topics from each school year’s curriculum to aid student’s connection to road safety learning.
Year-by-year road safety education for ages 5-12.
03. IDEATION + PROTOTYPING
Creating & Testing Interactive Gamified Learning Experiences
The team selected 3 years to develop prototyped gamified interactive activities to aid student’s learning and reiterate topics covered in the road safety lessons. Due to extreme time constraints and ethical limitations, we ran informal in-house evaluations to assess our designs.
In-house evaluation results for initial prototypes of year 1, 4, and 5 gamified activities
Based on the evaluations, the team made key improvements to the UI, visual design, and simplified the wording for all screens.
04. FINAL DESIGNS
The initial designs were refined and tailored to better suit young student’s learning experiences with simple text, clear instructions, and fun, brightly colored visual designs.
Final prototyped learning activities for year 1, 4, & 5.
05. RESULTS + LEARNINGS
Final In-House Evaluation Shows Improvements Made To Gamified Learning Experiences
Annotated designs showing key changes made from initial to final prototypes.
Overall Results
Provided interactive learning activities to reinforce road safety lessons
Successfully informed future plans for official county road safety educational program
Learnings
It’s important to test assumptions from different cultures/countries against existing research and information before using them as a basis for designs
You have to take special considerations when designing for children (i.e. mental development stages, when they learn different concepts/topics in school, how they learn best, etc.)