Safetysaga

Project Statement

In the past, when I was a teacher of a primary school club, I found that in addition to guiding them to carry out activities, it was also crucial to pay attention to their safety. Once I had to lead the students in my club across the street to a park next to school for outdoor activities. Although the distance from the school to the park was only a few hundred meters, the journey was exhausting. I must always pay attention to whether every child is walking on the sidewalk, or whether he or she accidentally runs into the road because of playing with classmates. When crossing the street, I have to repeat to them that even if there is no car now, because the traffic light on the sidewalk is red, so we can not pass. After the after-school club, I discussed the problem with the school’s teacher. The teacher told me that although the school provides safety training, the effect seems to be not satisfactory, because the content of the school safety curriculum is not fixed, and it is difficult to create a safe environment for children to truly internalize and master the safety knowledge in practice. Therefore, I hope that by designing an online program, children can increase their safety awareness by allowing them to learn and choose in various virtual situations.

Before designing the app, I conducted user research. Preliminary interviews with a few elementary school teachers and parents I worked with in the past revealed their dissatisfaction with the existing safety training application. Teachers said that regular safety courses in schools are not enough for children to master safety knowledge, which depends on parents to strengthen children's safety awareness in daily life to some extent. But parents also say that there are not many opportunities in daily life to educate children about safety, especially fire or medical safety, and this extreme situation is difficult to encounter. In response to these requirements, I initially designed several core functions for Safetysaga:

• Safety-Focused Interactive Stories: The app's primary function is to reinforce children's understanding of safety knowledge and awareness through interactive stories based on school safety teachings.

• Categorized Sessions: The app is divided into different categories: traffic, fire, medical, and daily life sessions, each focusing on specific safety aspects.

• Video-based Training: Each session starts with a video highlighting 3-4 safety points. After watching, children can use their created characters to make choices in scenarios related to the safety points from the video.

• Consequence-Based Learning: Wrong choices in the scenarios result in corresponding outcomes, such as a simulated car accident, illustrating the consequences of unsafe decisions.

• Motivational Rewards: If the child successfully completes all the scenarios with correct choices, a medal or reward system is implemented to encourage and motivate their learning process.