Institute of Play / Playforce
Playforce was an educatational community and resource allowing members to add perspectives on various types of games based on related learning topics.
It’s goal was to provide a platform to help parents and teachers discover educational games that were aligned with school standards. And to help build key 21st century competencies like systems thinking, collaboration and intelligent resourcing; and (most importantly) are effectively used by a community of practice and be able to share the details of their experience.
Institute of Play was a non-profit design studio founded in 2007 by a group of game designers in New York City. An interdisciplinary team of designers, strategists and learning practitioners, IoP created learning experiences rooted in the principles of game design. The Institute’s research and design work has been widely featured as an innovative and accessible approach to transforming education through play.
Home Carousel
A curated selection of games with an emphases on perspectives were showcased on the homepage.
Perspectives:
A perspective is a special kind of post pertaining to a game of the submitter's choice. The platform was built around users honing their writing skills while sharing these perspectives about what they've learned while playing.
Adding a Perspective
Advancement:
Another goal we had for this platform was to give kids, parents and educators a venue in which to practice and gain reputation and “proof of competency” for game review skills.
We layered in specific gamified elements such as badges and “flag flair” – mini attachments to their flag avatar – as rewards for advancement. Members of the platform could showcase their achievements on their profile.
Process / Wires:
A few examples of truncated user flows – a small sample of the many wireframes produced prior to higher-fidelity compositions.
Perspectives / Game Page
Perspectives / Game Page Comments
Basic Search + Filtering
Training:
In order to prioritize and maintain a certain level of quality, we provided simple walkthroughs that went over different aspects of being a Playforce member. These mainly focused on how to advance through well-written perspectives.
Training Sample Flow
