Curio
AR EDUCATION GAMIFICATION 36 HOURS UNITY VUFORIA
Roles:
UI & UX Engineer
Project Timeline:
36 Hours
Team Size:
4 People
Overview
A gamified educational AR app that isn't meant to teach. Instead, it focuses on reigniting the innate curiosity of children which is often lost in standard school education.
Contributions
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Team leadership
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UI & UX engineer
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Designed & Implemented all UI elements
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Scanned and created a database for computer vision
Low fidelity mock-up
Our Goal
To motivate children to be curious and ask questions. Some of the most brilliant minds within our world grew up searching for knowledge instead of being spoon fed it by others. Using Curio, children are not forced to learn; instead they are encouraged to. By searching through our everyday world, children can discover new information that they may not have otherwise searched for.
High fidelity mock-up
Inspiration
Today’s education system is flawed. Since birth, children have been told to learn by doing and being curious. Once at the age of 5, this all changes. Children are pushed into classrooms and are expected to consume spoon fed information, instead of learning it themselves. This causes children to grow out of this innate method of learning, and are left with an unnatural and ineffective method. As they age, many children lose their innate curiosity for knowledge, and are now are no longer excited to learn.
The statistics are evident. In Canada, 4 provinces are significantly below the national mean grades in science. Science is a subject that revolves around a person’s drive to ask questions about the world, and due to our current way of learning, it’s no wonder why children are not interested in this field.
For this reason, we wanted to make an educational application that doesn’t teach. Instead, it promotes the innate curiosity of children to reignite. Using an app we created, Curio, children can discover new aspects of their world, based off of what they are curious to know.
Creating an educational app that doesn't look/feel educational
A big issue for us was making sure the app didn't feel educational. Education carries a big stigma towards kids as being boring and not fun. We made sure to design everything so it didn't feel like education by following a few core principles that we set out.
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Non-forced interactions (user freedom).
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Empowering user choice.
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Friendly and simple information.
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Low cognitive load