Animal-Go!

We live in a society where often times we forget how engulfed we are in technology. Some may view it as a bad thing for our next generations due to the distraction of education. We have come up with an idea to better promote the learning of animals through technology to use it to our advantage. We call it, Animal-Go. Similar to Pokemon-Go, kids go out on and explore wildlife first hand, being able to take picture of animals and then being educated on what it is and other interesting facts about them. They can explore animals in their area with entering their location on a map or just go out and look for animals on their own. Afterwards, they have an option to help organizations specific to each animal and either volunteer for that organization or donate to their cause.

The difficult part of this app was figuring out how to make it more interactive and not just finding animals just to collect them. Because of this, the idea of giving the user an option to take matter to their own hands came up. The user could become more involved and get to know more about this animal through the “help this animal” option and visiting websites of organization that specializes in that species and even volunteer and donate to them. One thing I would address differently in the future is how to utilize the geotagging feature more.

The thing that really attracted me to this specific project was the fact that I was able to take something that is looked at as a negative aspect to our society (such as kids using technology) and turning it into a more positive experience. It helped me dig deep into the thinking process and figure out details from every angle, such as “How do I make this more intriguing” and “How will the user interact with this kind of format”

I can see this technique in the future applying not only to young teens but also adults. The topic of animals might change, but the concept would be similar. It could be used for finding jobs in the area, or finding local eats. Such as taking a picture of a good restaurant and the app will give you restaurants similar to it for you to try out. For this specific app, organizations of wildlife would lend themselves to this approach because they want more recognition to their organization and this project could help promote more organizations to bring awareness to wildlife. However this app would not be appropriate for very young children under the age of 10 without an adult because it is dangerous to go out on your own.