BankerGoose

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  Have a stroll around our Goose Banking District!

Inspiration

The idea began from the Interac workshop where we were inspired to enhance the way children are introduced to money management / online banking. From here, we brainstormed multiple solutions and eventually decided a game would be the best way to tackle this problem.

What it does

BankerGoose features a parental interface that gives parents the ability to grant an allowance when their kid completes a specific task. For example, $10 if the dishes are done every day for a week. With this allowance, users (children) will be able to spend virtual money in the game (and hopefully receive real money in real life!). The game is designed to incorporate lessons through each spending interface. For example, at the market, one would be prompted to buy 3 smurfs for 5$ or 2 smurfs for 4$. This encourages kids to think more about their spending and what they want from their purchase.

How we built it

The graphics were all constructed from scratch using Adobe Photoshop, and the back-end design was done using C#.

Challenges we ran into

With minimal game development experience, we faced a steep learning curve. Additionally, a large majority of our time was spent on version control as different team members had slightly different versions of Windows Forms which prohibited us to merge, pull or push our individual code.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The graphics and structure of the game allow for a very easy to use and attractive interface for young children. In addition, the application environment allows the users to feel less like they are in school trying to learn a new subject and more as if they are playing a fun, online mini-game!

What we learned

A lot of brainstorming, rapid prototyping, and design thinking is involved in creating a marketable product. For instance, we learned a lot about the demographic (younger kids) in which we chose to target and how they interact with technology. This allowed us to step back and evaluate the complexity of our design. In other words, making our concept a little more simple in order to capture the attention of our targeted users.

What's next for BankerGoose

In the future, BankerGoose would like to incorporate more of our User Interface / User Experience research into the application. This might entail the ability for one to choose their own character, interface with multiple different mini-games, incorporating a sound library (background/game music).

Built With

• c#-windows-forms-.net-photoshop