Water Worx – an Australian first for the Powerhouse Museum – is an iPad game designed to teach kids of all ages about the complex task of managing Sydney’s water system.
The game, which runs across eight iPads, aims to teach children and adults about the challenges associated with managing Sydney’s water supply system and is the first deployment of iPads as museum gallery interfaces in Australia.
It was an exciting time for the Powerhouse team (led by Seb Chan and Erika Dicker) as they began the process of upgrading the aging Ecologic exhibition. Sydney Water was onboard as a major sponsor and the two organisations agreed that they needed a centre-piece installation that would be visually stunning and highly interactive. The brief was to entertain while helping (mostly younger) visitors understand the complexity and issues that are a part of managing Sydney’s water cycle.
Co-designing with the community
We involved a diverse group of key stakeholders and potential users in the design process from the outset, including a core team from the Powerhouse itself, educators, and a number of passionate game designers and testers aged 7-10 years old. Amongst our usual kit of exploratory design methods, we co-designed three fun and informative games in the initial Immersion workshop which led us to recognise the potential for a game based approach to this project. Through this collaborative process, we also determined that iPads were an appropriate delivery mechanism, trumping the multi-touch table that was initially proposed and a number of other ideas that were considered, such as a Waterwall.
Upon further exploration and prototyping, we settled on the concept of a simulation/management game that would challenge users to maintain the urban water system for as long as possible to support a growing population of thirsty characters. The intention was to convey the difficulty of managing all the various elements of the system (including rain water into a dam, water pumping to a local storage tower, filtration and sewage treatment, etc) while ensuring gameplay and fun wasn’t sacrificed.
Prototype driven design & development
We developed the game with the coding team at Bonobo Labs using an agile and iterative methodology, creating real working prototypes along the way – a process which is great for all design projects but no more so than for game design. This allowed us to refine, re-think and ultimately make a vast number of improvements throughout the project and constantly explore and test ideas quickly and cheaply. Critically the iterative model allowed us to prioritise features and remove the less important ones as time and budgets became tighter.
Results
The resulting game is already proving a HUGE success. Seb Chan, Head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse described the outcome as “triple thumbs up” and a teacher visiting from Sydney’s Barker College sent this great feedback: “… the Water Worx game made (the kids) realise how hard it is to manage the water supply – mission accomplished! It was a big favourite.”