Interactive
Federal Trade Commission
Kids Website: You Are Here
Background
Statistics show that children play a surprisingly powerful role in the marketplace, particularly in the way they can often influence what their parents buy or allow them to buy. To make children aware of potentially fraudulent or unfair business practices, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) set out to create a valuable resource to help educate children about the marketplace. The FTC recognized that with the significant amount of time children spend online, the best way to reach, engage, and ultimately educate children was through a fun and interactive website involving educational lessons and games.
To accomplish this goal, the FTC partnered with JDG Communications, Inc. to conceptualize, design, and produce a website to appeal to kids ages 11–14. The website would introduce not only basic economic concepts and describe how the market works, but also explain the role the FTC plays within the market. Most importantly, the site aimed to help kids understand the implications of their choices and the importance of being an educated consumer.
"It's a great tool for parents and teachers who are trying to help kids understand their role in the marketplace. It takes a unique approach to both consumer tips and the role of business and government in daily life."
William Kovacic
FTC Chairman
JDG's Solution
To ensure that the site developed for the FTC could equally achieve the goals of being educational, entertaining, interactive, and appealing to the identified age group, JDG engaged in a strategic process, beginning with a research and development phase. This initial step consisted of gaining feedback from both children and educators through a series of message workshops. Discussions ranged in topic from students' online habits, favorite websites, and online gaming preferences, to how consumer protection is currently taught and the best ways to inform educators that such a teaching resource is available.
Once a thorough understanding of the audience was gained, JDG embarked upon concept development. The JDG team, along with FTC's feedback and insight throughout, began developing the site through the use of outlines, storyboards and initial illustrations. The setting that established the direction of the site was a shopping mall, due to the large variety of scenarios such an environment offered. Particular attention was dedicated to the development of characters, both those that would serve as mall guides for the user and other distinctive and relatable characters that would be featured throughout the mall scenarios.
To continue gaining feedback throughout the process and ensure that the setting, colors, and most importantly, the characters, were on track, JDG developed a "water cooler" site that displayed the initial interface and character design. Access was given to selected students and educators who were able to evaluate and provide their input on the preliminary creative approach.
With enthusiastic feedback and a clear direction in mind, JDG continued to develop the site, characters, games, script and dialogue, and overall look and feel. Based on the initial content provided, the site was divided into different mall areas, each focusing on a unique consumer topic and providing interactive lessons, games and character scenes. Characters were designed with several strategic goals in mind. Ultimately, it was decided that a highly stylized approach would appeal to the age demographic, represent a diverse set of characters, and offer unique and entertaining personalities.
Once the direction for the mall areas and characters had been established, JDG proceeded with illustrations, audio recording, animation, and programming. JDG recorded all audio and voiceovers with the distinctive qualities of the characters, as well as the earlier feedback and preferences shared by students, as a guide to making the characters engaging and the overall site fun. Extensive programming was conducted to insure that the numerous interactive elements and games would offer a unique user experience every visit.
Results
Although development of You Are Here required a complex and detailed process, the result was a seamless, animated website offering games, lessons, and entertaining scenes that can be shared and enjoyed by students, parents, and educators alike. While each mall scenario is independently educational and teaches important lessons about the marketplace directly to the user, the site also offers more detailed lesson plans through downloadable PDFs available in the Parent and Teacher section of the site. Initial responses to the site have been overwhelming positive. JDG and FTC have since embarked upon the development of additional mall areas and lesson plans—focusing on identity theft, privacy, and fraud—and look forward to expanding the valuable resource that is FTC's You Are Here.
Creative Process
Character Design
It was decided that a mostly human approach to character design would appeal to the target audience. The wide spectrum of brightly colored hair and skin tones allowed for maximum diversity, while creating very fun and interesting looking characters in a mostly realistic world.
Visual Development
As the content was developed, so was the visual style of the site. Every element of the site went through several iterations before its final form was approved and implemented. The earlier illustrations were sent to the FTC for general approval of the visual styles being developed. Once feedback was received, JDG continued to build out the style and add details until the final renderings were approved.
Sketches always accompanied scripts and game ideas that were sent to FTC for approval throughout the development process. Even though the sketches were fairly rough, they always provided an accurate glimpse into what the finished renderings might look like, as well as how the scenes would be laid out.
JDG chose to use an animation process called ‘cut-out’ animation. In cut-out animation, characters are rigged like movable puppets that can be re-positioned and re-used throughout a scene, as opposed to traditional animation, where every movement is re-drawn by hand. This method allowed JDG to work efficiently while providing the level of quality the client was looking for in the animations.
The Final Product
You Are Here is a fun, interactive, and highly engaging site that can be enjoyed by students over and over again in a new way—and also teaches them critical lessons about being more savvy consumers.
Click here to visit the "You Are Here" Web site.
