The Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) is the national wildlife agency responsible for handling wildlife matters that fall under the responsibility of the federal government. RealDecoy worked with the CWS to develop the Jump Into Nature project.
The staff at RealDecoy clearly executed a successful series of educational games and designs that echoed the fun and spontaneity of the material that we were trying to convey. With an accurate understanding of our concepts and needs, they worked very hard to ensure that all of our concerns were addressed and that we had an accurate, insightful and fun project to share with Canadian youth!
Courtney Price
Wildlife Outreach and Science Liaison Officer
Canadian Wildlife Service / Environment Canada
The CWS had purchased two interactive kiosks to use at science centres, museums and nature interpretation centres across Canada. The purpose of the kiosks was to demonstrate the importance of biodiversity and to educate visitors about the impact people can all have on wildlife.
THE CHALLENGE
Creating a fun experience
The kiosks needed to be fun while still communicating important information about biodiversity. While the target audiences for the kiosks were children and youth, the kiosks also had to appeal to adults.
Limited implementation budget
Due to the limited budget for this project, RealDecoy could only develop a handful of games. However, the solution had to be scalable so the CWS could add more content to the kiosks in the future.
Additionally, the CWS had a very limited source of images and graphic content and next to no budget to acquire photos, maps and illustrations.
Developing for a touch screen
Coming up with the right sized buttons for visitors to click on was challenging. When designing for a kiosk, there is no keyboard or mouse for the visitor to use, so everything had to be big enough for a visitor to touch and click on.
OUR SOLUTION
Interactive games
RealDecoy developed four interactive games of varying levels of complexity. They are:
- Nature Detective — allows children to explore a scenario and discover clues to a mystery, the first version being that of the disappearing turtles.
- Nature Trivia — serves up a series of trivia questions about biodiversity in Canada.
- Where in Canada — allows children to explore Canadian wildlife through a map interface.
- The Eco Builder — allows visitors to select items to add to their backyard and to see the impact of the addition and subtraction of different elements on the biodiversity of their ecosystem.
Sourcing images and content
RealDecoy worked with the CWS to find a source of inexpensive images and reworked parts of the system to leverage an illustrative approach which gave us a lot more flexibility as we were able to bring in a free-lance illustrator to provide custom illustrations that met the CWS’s requirements for content and accuracy.
A scalable system
The entire system is scalable to allow the CWS to add Nature Detective mysteries, trivia questions, species and ecosystems. This scalability ensures that the kiosks will remain relevant and fresh with updated content.
