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Reflective Commentary

I chose some methods and strategies based on the design thinking. In the DISCOVER period of the double diamond, the key method is primary research of observation and mind mapping. I discovered that the cemetery is a place where life and death coexist. In the DEFINE period, I employed the key methods of article reading and information integration. This led to the conclusion that children need death education and that the current approach to death education needs to be made more interesting. During the DEVELOPMENT period, I employed case studies and I found that the AR game format suited my design concept. The role play method was used to be able to get a different perspective on the target audience's needs. During the DELIVER period, I employed the method of reading children's illustration books to learn more about the narratives that children receive. I employed the further method of exploring different kinds of AR APP personally.

In the making progress, I carried out primary research such as photography and observational drawing in order to gain a better understanding of Mill Road Cemetery. To deepen my understanding of death education, I carried out a lot of secondary research such as article reading. After I decided to use the format of a game, I did a lot of research about game design such as game setting, game mechanics and even game's dialog box format. However, this process allowed me to focus too much on the game itself and ignore the need of the target audience, which impeded the making process. However, there were many sources that have helped my development. For example, Diana K. Clark Schrammpaper’s paper shows that children would develop nagative emotions and behaviors if they don't learn about death in advance, which made me to understand the importance of death education. Child Bereavement UK indicates that children have different understangding of death at different ages, which helped me to determine the age of my target audience. The Japanese documentary The Phone of the Wind is about people “calling” their lovered ones lost in the 2011 tsunami. It inspired me to think about expression as a form of support and relief from negative emotions. So I added the game mechanism of expression to the project as a way of easing children's grief for their dead pets. After reading some children's illustration books, I realised that for children, death education does not need to be serious and what they need is a simple and beautiful understanding. They are more accepting a dead person or pet becomes another form of existence, like a leaf falling to the ground and becoming nourishment for a tree, or a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. So I want to let dead pets exist in another form in the game I designed. Wonderscope is an AR game for children. I downloaded it from the app store and played the game myself. It really made me excited when I see the virtual objects in the real world and I decided to use AR technology in my game design, allowing children to interact with virtual pets. My research did not need ethical approval.

My initial idea was to help ease children's negative emotions in the face of death through death education. At first I wanted to create an educational space in the Mill Road Cemetery. Children could learn about death and life through AR technology, with the assistance of their parents. However, this approach was too educational and neglected the children's sense of participation and interaction. The cognitive process of children is learning by doing. Based on this, I decided to design an AR game that would allow children to participate in. After I doing some research about game design, the decision to shift my focus from death education and game design to children's psychology was important. Because the target audience's need is to release the negative emotions of facing the death of a pet. Death education for children was the outcome and the way to achieve it had to be centred on children. So based on the target audience’s need, I decided to create a connection between the children and the dead pet, thus engaging the children. In the film COCO, people and animals take on another form when they die and live in the undead world, where they retain their basic appearance and personality. Inspired by this, I decided to create a fantasy world through AR technology, where these children's dead pets can live forever in the form of elves with their respective original characteristics. I want to achieve a multi-sensory interaction with things in the virtual world, which involved establishing a connection on a physical level and on an emotional level, and in line with the establishment of these two layers of connection as well as the most intuitive and simple one is simulation game, where children can interact with this elves at any time. Adding to this is a death education component: providing children’s illustration books on death-related topics. At the same time, I was surprised by the alive poster with the AR app called Artivive. With the addition of AR technology, the poster is taken out of the static paper state, it can move in the mobile phone.

I find feasibility of AR is the most stimulating. When I used AR apps to combine elements of my design with the real world so that they could exist in the same space, I felt the technology deeply. I think design is about changing people’s lifestyle, and through this project I see the huge potential of AR in the future of design. I am satisfied with the process and the results. I update my ideas through a lot of research and learn more about AR. The final outcome reflected the brief I set myself, firstly the game needs to be played in the Mill Road cemetery at the beginning to give new energy to the cemetery. Secondly, the game connects with the target audience to relieve the negative emotions caused by the death of pets, thus satisfying their needs. Thirdly, It is educational because it contains some illustration books about death education.

I have developed an interest in AR technology and I would like to try more AR to create a connection between my visual work and real space. I should add more interaction to the game to increase the player's immersion. I want to avoid repeating research of similar game designs. The next step in my project is to estimate the funding for the development of the game.

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Bibliography

  Lanham, M. (2017) Augmented reality game development : create your own augmented reality games from scratch with Unity 5. 1st edition. Birmingham, [England: Packt.

  Zuo, T., Jiang, J., van der Spek, E., Birk, M. and Hu, J. (2022) ‘Situating Learning in AR Fantasy, Design Considerations for AR Game-Based Learning for Children’, Electronics (Basel), 11(15), p. 2331–. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11152331.

  Kim, H., Lee, H., Cho, H., Kim, E. and Hwang, J. (2018) ‘Replacing Self-Efficacy in Physical Activity: Unconscious Intervention of the AR Game, Pokémon GO’, Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 10(6), p. 1971–. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su10061971.

  Friesen, H., Harrison, J., Peters, M., Epp, D. and McPherson, N. (2020) ‘Death education for children and young people in public schools’, International journal of palliative nursing, 26(7), pp. 332–335. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12968/ijpn.2020.26.7.332.

  Kurowska-Susdorf, A. (2015) ‘Parents and children in death education – a Kashubian context’, Edukacja : studia, badania, innowacje, 133(2), pp. 139–149.

   Ambrose, G. and Harris, P. (2015) Design thinking for visual communication. Second edition. London: Fairchild Books.

  Manzini, E. (2015) Design, when everybody designs : an introduction to design for social innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts ;: The MIT Press.

  Noble, I. and Bestley, R. (2018) Visual research : an introduction to research methods in graphic design. 3rd edition. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

  Vormittag, L. (2014) ‘Making (the) subject matter: Illustration as interactive, collaborative practice’, Journal of Illustration, 1(1), pp. 41–67. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1386/jill.1.1.41_1.

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Presentation

I’d like to talk about my proposal of life and death education for children. 

Mill Road Cemetery is a relaxing place. Some parents bring their kids here for a walk or a bike ride. Mill Road Cemetery is also a place where life and death coexist. Tombstones symbolize death and plants symbolize life. It can concretely explain to children the lifecycle. New life often continues from death. 

 Death is frightening because of its characteristic of the unknown. Children have less life experience and limited cognitive development to integrate death. They are increasingly exposed to death in our society. Professional literature indicates that there are potential adverse effects of unresolved childhood grief.Frequent behavior changes, such as crying, irritability, hopelessness, sleep disturbances, aggression or a decrease in attention span occur in children who are having difficulty understanding death. 

Children’s understanding of death is different during growth.Children under 2 years old have no understanding of the concept of death. Children aged 2 to 5 years can develop an awareness that death is different to being alive. but They do not understand abstract concepts like ‘forever’ . Children between the ages of 5 and 7 begin to understand death is permanent and irreversible.

Death education can be traced back to the death awareness movement, which began with Herman Feifel's book, The Meaning of Death (1959). Daniel Leviton first articulated the rationale for teaching children about death. Appropriate death education can provide children with a more comprehensive understanding of the meaning of life.

The current methods of death education are classroom education, parent communication, and children's book, which are less interactive and interesting. I want to combine AR technology .Children can interact with virtual objects on the basis of reality,fully immersed in the environment, but not limited by environmental conditions. which is a special experience.

Wonderland is an AR game APP for children aged 5 to 9 who are facing the death of their pets. The goal is to ease their feelings of loss and provide them with proper death education. Wonderland retains the beauty of the childlike world, creating a fantasy world for these children, so that the dead pets will live here forever, live in their hearts.

The AR game aims at children between the ages of 5 and 9 years who gradually understand death is permanent and irreversible.They may need to overcome the negative emotions of fear and anxiety about death and gain a deeper understanding of life and death.

The game is divided into three steps. The first step is to fill in the profile of your dead pet. We can generate an elf based on the information with AI technology.

After completing the first step, you can proceed to the second step: Find your elf in the cemetery.After a person or pet dies, his spirit will become a flower or an elf and will live in the wonderland which is mill road cemetery. You need to find your elf by his voice. In this progress, a lovely squirrel will talk to you to give you some guidance.

After completing step two, you can move on to step three: You can open the app and interact with your elf from anywhere, regardless of your location. You can feed him and play with him. Pet cultivation games can establish physical and emotional connections, and AR technology can realize multi-sensory interaction with things in the virtual world. Wonderland uses gestures instead of touch screens to interact with pets in a way that is closer to real nature, narrowing the gap between the virtual and physical worlds.

You can get coins by completing assignments so you have enough coins to buy  food for your elf from the shop. The assignments are divided into reading  children's illustration book about death education and sending an expression letter . You can express anything to your dead pet by words or voice. Each time you finish reading an illustration book, you can get 50 coins. Each time you send an expression letter, you get 40 coins and may receive a random reply.

To conclude, death is not the end of life, just as leaves fall and become the nutrition of trees, caterpillars become butterflies. In Wonderland, a dead pet will also become an elf, accompany you forever. In the process of interacting with the elf pets, children can better understand death.

If i succeed. I expect that it will draw the public’s attention to children's life and death education , thus attracting to sponsor and promote my project's product. For example, Child Bereavement UK help children and families to rebuild their lives when a child grieves.  STARS is a Cambridgeshire Charity, providing counselling for local bereaved children and young people and support for their families. I also want to add more interaction with players to improve this game in the future.This AR game will also make people accept and use AR technology more and more frequently, so that technology can change our lifestyle.

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Adobe Aero

Using Adobe Aero to bring the elements into practice in the cemetery.

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Sponsor

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Visual design

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Decision

Through some research on children's illustration books, I have discovered that the death presented in illustration books for children is not serious theoretical knowledge, but a beautiful representation of death, which is more easily accepted and understood by children. For example: leaves fall to the ground and become nourishment for the tree; caterpillars become butterflies. So I decided that I would no longer focus too much on the game design itself, but rather shift the focus to the psychology of the children. I wanted to create a fantasy world where dead family/friends/pets live in the world and in their hearts all the time. I wanted to achieve a multi-sensory interaction with things in the virtual world, which involves connection building on a physical level and on an emotional level, and the most intuitive and simple way to meet both of these levels of connection building and is pet ownership. So I narrowed down my user group from children dealing with death to children dealing with the death of their pets.

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Secondary research 

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Brain storm

The game is child-centered, with Mill Road Cemetery, the dead and educational meanings.

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Simulation game research

Simulation games can establish physical and emotional connections.

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Narrative Game Research—What Remains of Edith Finch

During the GDC talk, the experience design process for Edith Finch was laid out in detail. Ian Dallas starts by defining three feelings he wants to transmit through games: sublime, intimate, and murky. After creating three feelings in his mind, Ian Dallas drew goals from feelings. The first goal is "the scene must have a narrative element", the second goal is "the story must be connected", and the third goal is "the storyteller must be eccentric". At the same time, he found that the feelings "sublime" are not easy, so he chose "overwhelmed".

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Coco

The world of the undead in Coco is different from the dark, cold and grim world of the dead in our imagination. It is a colorful world. There are all kinds of flying fairy creatures. Although the dead here are all skeletons, they are not scary, but on the contrary, they are full of warmth. After all, the dead only look different from human beings. They live just like human beings. They sing and dance.

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An illustration book about death.