I lead a team of three to create a game that reinforces the lessons of school bus safety for elementary students. The game is installed on a base-level PC which is housed in a unique mobile safety unit. This unit is an interactive story-room on wheels that is driven from school to school throughout the year, allowing young students to board the bus, interact with various engaging stations, and learn from the helpful experts.

This game helps to teach appropriate behavior on a school bus and assess the lesson learned. I developed the game to be visually stimulating but rely on very little text with an emphasis on animating all of the behaviors [appropriate and inappropriate] to be modeled on the bus. A star system was integrated to easily show progress to the students and a time limit was implemented since students should not monopolize the station. The game is personalized so that the child can enter his/her name which is used throughout — following the story-book feel. Upon completion, if the student has enough stars, he/she can print out a visually appealing certificate customized with his/her name and star-score as a tangible reward for success.

The game was built in Flash and installed on touchpanels inside UMass’ mobile safety unit. I was lead designer, programmer, and art director.