Executive Director Sasha Barab talks codeathon participants through principles for designing technology social impact.
The Center for Games & Impact, last week, prepared participants for a two-day coding for social impact event at Arizona State University. The Clinton Foundation Codeathon, also sponsored by Microsoft Youthspark, took place before the start of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) 2014 at ASU. Titled “Code for Impact” (#codeforimpact), the event preceded the kickoff of CGI U and participants where challenged to spend 48 hours building unique digital prototypes inspired by CGI U Commitments to Action.
A team from the Center, along with Executive Director, Sasha Barab, and Director of Innovations, Adam Ingram-Goble, primed participants for their objective with an intensive, applied introduction to designing games for social impact.
“It was an honor to be invited to kick off the codeathon with the Clinton Foundation and Microsoft. At the Center we are passionately committed to empowering the next generation of our world’s leaders with the tools they need to create powerful social impact technology solutions,” said Barab, “Games are a powerful medium for igniting positive change in our world and the principles of impact game design can apply across interactive technology solutions.”
After a presentation from Director Barab, participants played through a paper-prototyped game design to practice identifying a message and refining game mechanics to contribute to that message.
Adam Ingram-Goble, director for innovations at the Center for Games & Impact, guides codeathon participants through a game design exercise.
“When we teach students game design we focus on a few key things to get them started. First, we want them to clearly define the learning or social impact objective for their game because this will inform the initial design and the subsequent iteration as things develop,” said Ingram-Goble, “Then, we want them to consider which game mechanic might lend itself to playing their message quickly so they can jump right into making and playtesting their games. The same ideas apply here and at game jams, hackathons, and codeathons when working under a tight deadline to test technology ideas for social impact.”
After the introductory exercise with the Center teams spent the rest of their time working on design concepts in the areas of water quality, medicine, and education. Day two of the event culminated with presentations from each team pitching and demoing their concepts to a panel of judges including Chelsea Clinton, vice chair of the Clinton Foundation. The winning team, MediText chose the medical focus area and pitched a design for helping doctors support patient adherence to following medication guidelines. The concept included a doctor dashboard, the use of a “virtual friend” to gently remind patients about these guidelines for the medications they take, and could even engage the patients friends and family if necessary.
Read the highlights from all the CGI U 2014 events at and around Arizona State University here.
Visit our Codeathon Facebook Album for pictures from the event:
About the Center for Games & Impact
The Center for Games & Impact (CGI) mission is to investigate, innovate, and cultivate game-infused solutions to society’s biggest challenges with the goal of unleashing the unique power of videogames to create sustainable solutions for society’s biggest social, cultural, scientific, economic and educational challenges.