forever home

forever home

In this 4 month long project, I designed a board game that fosters communication between parents and children about what it means to take care of another being and why it is important to adopt.

https://portfolio.newschool.edu/deshr015/

How might we educate children and adults on importance of animal adoption and foster conversations around ethics?

Initial Brainstorming

I chose two questions to focus on:
- What are the effects of animal interbreeding to create pure breeds which are bought and sold?
- How to encourage adoptions (especially abandoned animals, retired service animals, etc.)?

Peer Discussions

I conducted interviews of peers and engaged in discussions around this topic to understand people’s views and opinions on it. I also looked at research from different papers, topics like anthropomorphism and precedents on work related to human-animal relationships.

Interviews

People mentoined the American Kennel Club (AKC) which is a platform for verified pure breeders. Shelters that have rescue animals or animals that have been abandoned have a more thorough screening process to avoid animals getting abandoned again.

Prototype 1

I chose to create a physical board game to foster conversation and help parents communicate the concerns and responsibilities much easily. The primary takeaway after testing this prototype was that everyone needs to come out a winner and learn something from the game. I decided to make it collaborative and added levels to the learning elements - preparation, foster and adoption.

Prototype 2

The second iteration included two sets of new interactions - helping a friend and solving a problem. The rules were more defined, although the winning conditions needed to be more elaborate. There was also a QR code card with different resources and information related to animal adoption.

Final Output

The final version created a comprehensive, end-to-end experience and received a lot of positive response regarding the narrative, collaborative and conversational elements, the varying levels of cards which would facilitate the understanding of different problems and the information that is provided.