Our Second Prototype Idea!

We have developed an idea for a prototype that examines education outside of the classroom. This prototype will allow us to incorporate a few of our other areas of opportunity in a very exciting way by bringing in elements about changing incentive structures, incorporating personal interests, and learning skills versus learning material.

Our idea is a platform that provides users with embedded games and resources to help them learn in a fun and engaging way. Our target audience will be kids in late elementary school or early middle school. The goal of our prototype is not to create new educational content, but rather to collect all kinds of resources that encourage logic, critical thinking, or creativity and deliver them in one central place. We want to avoid games and content that feel explicitly educational -- we’ve seen many variations on a solve this subtraction problem as quickly as you can for points, and see this is a common failure mode. Instead, we want to choose resources that teach more abstract skills, and that are compelling on their own. There is a wealth of games that encourage logical thinking, puzzles that draw on math skills, and fascinating stories with literary merit. We think that uniting it in one place will make for a great user experience.

For a first iteration, we would like our prototype to include a way for users to play Sudoku, Minesweeper, Planarity, and Mastermind. Our desired MVP is a front end that illustrates how we would like users to interact with our platform. This includes how they will navigate the site, play games, and be shown examples of how the skills they are learning can be applied in the real world. Once we reach our MVP, we would also like to include a back end such that an individual can log in and our database can track their progress.

At this point in time we are not sure about what form our incentive structure will take. Given the research done in the last couple decades about the true sources of human motivation, giving points for an activity may not be a good idea. This idea is outlined in Drive by Daniel H. Pink. By adding points for an activity, we may inadvertently turn an activity from something joyful to something that feels like work. In any case, at this point in time we know that we would like to have something resembling incentive to get people interested in new topics, but we are unsure about the right way to do that.