Are we alone? NOVA Labs sought to gamify the answer to this question.

In an imaginary world of lost aliens looking for new homes, we created an interface where students can search for life beyond earth and explore exoplanets; livable worlds orbiting faraway stars. By finding new homes for lost aliens, students could also discover the science behind what makes a planet livable.

The Challenge

Designing a coherent, engaging environment while disseminating knowledge through educational challenges.

While the UX team worked on a game flow that balanced learning challenges and achievement rewards, it was my job to ensure that the player is invested and interested in this world of lost aliens and lunar hub that they had been placed in. Thought Café brought me on to drive the style direction and UI design for this web application to create that visually engaging experience.

The approach

Our interdisciplinary team collaborated to inform aspects of each individual’s work and collectively iterate and improve the final product. To create a seamless, believable experience, we built out details of the story.

These details include:

• Separate alien species with adaptations to match the living conditions that they are looking for.

• A 3D lunar station with all the tools needed for space exploration and planet testing.

• Messages from real scientists to inform the learning, and tasks to gather the data of different planets.

• Branding for our lunar base and the company funding the mission. 

• Visual representations of different galaxies based on real data.

Meet the Aliens:

Enter the Lunar Station and use the tools provided:

The Tasks

Students play through games that range from puzzle solving games, to arcade-like research simulation games.

Branding:

Space Concept Art:

All these elements were designed to create a fun, and memorable, learning environment.

with gratitude

It takes a team!

This project was only made possible through the combined effort of the Nova Lab team, the Thought Café team, illustrator Justin Yu, and myself the art director. Without the continued cooperation, contribution, and communication of each individual, this final product would not exist.

Funding for the NOVA Exoplanet Lab, part of the WHIMC (What-if Hypothetical Implementations in Minecraft) project, was provided by the National Science Foundation (Grant 1906873).