Play Educa: Disney Edition
It is a platform developed with educators to play games and exercise school learning, according to the National Curriculum Base of the Ministry of Education (MEC) for pre-school.
I worked as a Game Designer adapting and balancing school content in a fun way that corresponded to the motor skills of the age group. And with the design team, I structured the navigation on the platform for the best usability experience for parents and children.
Project developed by Arcolabs and Escola 24h with authorization and supervision from Disney.
Development
The project was proposed by Escola 24h which had the school content already planned and the great challenge for the team was the shortage of time. There were more than 120 games and each one went through the review of the team itself, from the Escola, from Disney in Latin America and finally arrived at Mickey, I mean, at the Disney international headquarters. The deadline was tight and the approvals took at least 15 days to happen, so we created some game groupings, chose images and already made the script in English, following the model suggested by them:
Example of the content roadmap template for activities.
There were several precautions so that the activities and games were clear to the children, and the approach could not be rigid or overly corrective, and we couldn't use written elements. After the model was established, I created several scripts, phrases for the narration, suggested animations, transitions, SFXs and filled in many tables like the one shown above. Each of the game screens had a page with images, wireframe and descriptions (more or less 7 screens per script X 1 table per screen X 120 games = at least 840 tables).
In addition to all the corrections, the work became more fluid with iconic phrases that were repeated throughout tests, reviews, creations and more tests. Small activities were grouped by pedagogical content and soon we started to develop the environments/worlds in which they would be gathered together.
One of the versions of the Flowchart created for the platform.
A huge challenge for everyone, especially for the art team and for me is that Disney characters couldn't be animated. For the art team the challenge was obvious, but what do I have to do with it? The client used to ask for eye-catching animations and feedbacks to attract the attention of the children and that is where my work was difficult. I had to come up with ideas for feedbacks and VFXs that didn't involve the animated characters and at the same time seemed interesting to our little players.
This project introduced my studies of UX Design, as it was not just about the game and Game Design, but about a whole platform that should serve children and also parents.
Disney's Magic?
Despite seeming a cliché, finding Disney's Magic was one of the goals of the project. Our first feedback directly from Mickey (Worldwide Disney) was an e-mail with a single sentence: "Lack of magic".
With that answer we started to analyze our mistakes and set out in search of the Disney's Magic, but after all what is this magic? Where to find it? How to bring it to the project? We needed to create a welcoming environment for all of Disney's established characters and make children feel welcome, as if they were entering the classic Cinderella castle, the icon of Disney's Magic.
The image above shows the version of our Home that lacks magic. The worlds were represented by small characters that stood around the platform logo and changed positions while the child was on another screen. The characters would react to the touch, could speak directly to the child. A very friendly Home, but without magic.
.png)
.png)
After several conversations, options, meetings and votes, we arrived in a layout with literally small worlds: floating islands representing the different universes of knowledge (images above). Over time, we invested more in interactive elements, the islands received more details, animations and werw rebalanced since one could not seem more interesting than the other.
Disney's Magic is not a simple concept to learn or apply, but it is something that builds over time and when you achieve the result, you can feel the magic flowing.