Sharjah E-Government Society Builder
In early 2019, Sharjah E-Government held an annual retreat with ministry leaders to discuss how to transform society digitally. The brief was to create an experience that would help the ministry officials apply their learnings from the speakers at the retreat.
The solution was to create a digital society builder app, allows users to develop their city in a gamified manner. The design and development of this application was co-led by me and my colleague.
The experience begins as the ministry officials enter the seminar hall and get seated in their preassigned groups. Each group has a touch screen in front of them where they first check-in, and then pick their city avatar, name, and are later randomly assigned tarots that have characteristics they must keep in mind while making decisions during the game.
After each seminar speaker is done speaking, the teams are presented with a basic layout of old Sharjah city, and a multiple-choice question. Each question can dramatically alter the way their city looks. They can choose to improve their city's transportation system, industrialization, cultural growth, or energy sources to whatever degree they want, but often at the cost of something else.
The application was later readapted for different use. Instead of being used as a "game show" it was later used as a standalone event experience, where people who create the best societies have their cities displayed on a leaderboard under various categories. I created the scoring system based on the visitors' answers to the questions and their overall performance. In the end, the visitor would have an option to receive an email with a short clip of their digital society.
In terms of technical specifications, the application could act as a standalone touch screen experience or be connected to other screens via OSC signals or to a backend host unit that collects only the required information to process results of the user's performance. The backend system I set up was a fairly elementary one, accessed using MySQL, which allowed me to program logic for features like the leaderboards and player check-in.
SHARJAH EGOV RETREAT: PROJECT VIDEO | BEHIND THE SCENES
SHARJAH GITEX STAND: PROJECT VIDEO | SCREEN RECORDING
In early 2019, Sharjah E-Government held an annual retreat with ministry leaders to discuss how to transform the society digitally. Our brief was to create an experience that would help the ministry officials apply their learnings from the speakers at the retreat. Our solution was to create a digital society builder app. 1. The experience begins as the ministry officials enter the seminar hall, and get seated in their pre assigned groups. 2. Each group has a touch screen in front of them where they pick their city avatar and name, and they are then randomly assigned tarot characteristics which they have to keep in mind and base their decisions on. 3. After each speaker is done speaking, the teams are presented with a basic layout of old Sharjah city, and a multiple choice question. Each question can dramatically alter the way their city looks. They can choose to improve their city's transportation system, industrialisation, cultural growth or energy sources to whatever degree they want, but often at the cost of something else. I created this application in a team of two people at Eventagrate, where I was the lead for logic, while also working on the design of the city.
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