These are prototype / experimental websites built by Randy Walton all focusing on concepts and ideas to teach kids.
Ultimately the idea is for this space to grow into an actual site for kids, currently it serves as space for creative UI concepts dealing with UI designs built for learning.
This project is a simple game teaching how simple shapes can be combined to create more complex objects. The player is introduced to the Law of Simplicity (the Prägnanz principle) which is how our mind perceive things in simple elements. The goal of the game is to study the object presented and choose which shapes created it. The theme, or story, is a monster invasion, the monster faces need to be 'unravelled' in simple objects. There are 20 monsters that have 3 stages of difficulty.
The first rough prototype for the game (can be seen here) had issues with the shapes interface and progression through the game. The largest issue was the complexity of the end game. The original idea was to have both shape and colour the player had to progress through. A single monsters had multiple levels to unravel the last being colour mixing. Ultimately this was to many things to juggle and the initial colour mixing UI was awkward. The current version simplified everything to just shapes and focusing the game UI and progression.
While the colour components where removed from this game, I would like to bring them back with another Unraveller game that focuses on determining colour to unravel rather than shapes.
Launch
A story about colour theory that has user interacting with the story characters. Each monster is a Primary colour, when they interact they create more colours which then leads to colour schemes and so on.
Some of the user interaction, particularly with the characters, are not that intuitive making the flow through the story difficult at times. The story in places became too repetitive as all the colours need to be ‘found’ before moving on. This makes it difficult to get through the story as it’s not engaging for the reader.
No future plans to rebuild this however, similar experiments which would focus on a more solidified story, which will ultimately drive the user forward in a much better fashion. Also simplifying or better balancing of interaction the user needs to take, reduce repetition through an more evolved story
Launch
This project started of with an somewhat different idea. The first prototype which you can see here, was focused on using the idea of building a monster as a metaphor for learning html and css. The <body> html tags were the ‘body’ parts and the <head> was the ‘brain’. Testing this showed the metaphor to be lost next to the actual building of the monster. Focus was on the monster not what it was up made of. Because of this the next prototype focused just on the monster building.
There was positive feedback on the simple interface and that the user has freedom to build whatever they what right from the start. The coding metaphor was, for the most part, completely ignored and not understood. Strip this all away and simplified to focus on just a monster builder and a basic story.
No future plan is to rebuild this. If you want a good monster builder go to Tiny Bop! This is also a very old project, built back in 2010 (I've learned a lot since then). Amazingly the project still works, so I'll keep it around as it was one of my first attempts at an interactive story.
Launch
A colour learning game teaching primary, secondary and basic colour schemes. Built 2 of these games the other for shapes. More gaming than story elements in this project, the idea is to find colours that are missing from the environment displayed.
The user found the interface for this is too cumbersome (works on mobile but isn’t ideal) and the gaming elements are clunky. Basically the user finds the colours, the environment fills in and then it ends with no real reward. An awards sidebar tracks the users progress but again didn’t offer anything of value. There is also a lack of teaching per sa as the user can just click randomly till the colour match.
This was an off shoot of the Tale of Three Monsters, the goal working with a more elaborate environment the user could play with. Lots of problems with this project, ultimately it was taken over by style over substance (e.g. cool environment, but awkward UI). Rebuilding this project I would focus on balancing the story, the environment and UI.
Launch
A shape learning game, introducing gestalt theory in design. Built 2 of these games the other for colour. The concept for this was that a town is destroyed by an antagonist that you need to rebuild with shapes.
Same as the colour game the interface is too complex (this one is buggy on mobile) and the gaming elements don’t lead to anything of value for the user. This one has a better goal than the colour game as the user needs to rebuild something through out. An awards sidebar tracks the users progress but again didn’t offer anything of value.
If rebuilt, focus would be to simplify the interface and provide a better endgame where you can use the shapes somehow. The above Unraveller game is technically a branching of this one, teaching the same ideas but focusing on a simple UI instead of a environment.
Launch