NIWA - FUTURE COASTS AOTEAROA
Helping people & communities plan & adapt to climate change.
Overview
This game simulates a coastal lowland community under climate change. It aims to provide transformative tools that support decision-making and change. From creative concept, to user experience design and development, working alongside our gaming development partner GEOAR, this is the third serious game simulation we have designed and developed for NIWA.
CREATIVE OBJECTIVES
To create a game that...
Continues the objectives of the first two games.
The new game needed to fulfil the educational objectives of the previous games by immersing the user into the environment where climate change threats become more real and encourages conversations.
Highlights and demonstrates the four main coastal environment water threats:
River floods, storm surges, rising sea levels and rising groundwater can occur all at once. In this game, players experience a community response to these events and build an understanding of adaptation options, impacts, and future planning.
Encourages engagement to capture relevant NIWA data insights.
One of the purposes of the game is to collect player behaviours to support the construction of behavioural models. Data harvesting is a key objective, used to identify clusters or patterns of behaviour not based on intentions, but based on actions.
Aesthetically feels like a cohesive new addition to the existing ‘game franchise’.
The look and feel of the first two games has a unique charm and character that captures ‘Kiwi culture’ and landscapes. To build on the equity in the existing look and feel, we continued these graphic themes to create a series of games that are part of the same ‘game franchise’ family.
Makes improvements to the interface to improve the user experience.
While we wanted to make the game feel like a cohesive part of the franchise - as we did from My Coastal futures to the Township Flood Challenge - we also saw an opportunity to make strategic interface improvements to further enhance the user experience.
Looks at the location reference of the game. Location = anywhere.
We based the last two NIWA games on known references to existing townships. By incorporating more water threats, (and multiple farms, a township and a marae), this game has broader implications to more New Zealanders.
GAME DESIGN EVOLUTION
Our creative journey
Every aspect of this game simulation was carefully crafted with well thought out elements and user experience. The game design draws players in and provides educational opportunities and learning pathways to encourage playing again to try and create different outcomes. The game is relatable and creates real conversations around coastal living and how to adapt to live well in an ever-changing environment.
GAME FACILITATOR
For the game facilitator, we chose the New Zealand Dotterel, a cute little bird with two distinctive populations, one on the North Island and another on the South and a few other populations scattered all over the country.
AVATAR DEVELOPMENT
Continuing on from the success of the use of avatars in the previous 2 games, we created a new series of avatars to add to our ever growing avatar family.
USER INTERFACE DESIGN
Our Senior User Experience Designer utilised the design prototyping tool, FIGMA, to map out the detailed game user journeys and provide a user interface guide to the developers.
GAME ANIMATIONS
The Future Coasts Aotearoa game is brought to life by the many animations created and implemented throughout the game.
A TRUE PROJECT PARTNERSHIP
Real results.
Hot Mustard do a great job of taking complex data and science-based content and displaying it in user-friendly, simple interfaces that makes the data easy to understand and convey the messaging we need. They excel in user experience design using tools such as FIGMA to prototype what exactly will be built, so there’s no surprises during development. Jolene and the team are consultative, excellent problem solvers, take initiative and deliver to a high-quality standard, on-time and on-budget, and we really value this reliability.
ALEX FEAR
Senior Communications Advisor, NIWA
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