Walking in the Steps of Giants
What is it?
The “Walking in the Steps of Giants” project at Play4Tomorrow is designed to inspire students by tracing the early steps of significant innovators, or “giants”. This project has 3 key phases:
Research
Interactive Recreations / MVP Development
Strategic Game
Research
This phase was about researching the early years of innovators to understand the foundation of their contributions. The focus was on their primary years i.e before their big inventions. Here are some examples:
Scott Belsky (Behance)
Malala Yousafzai
Ray Dalio
Interactive Recreations (MVP)
This process involved creating modern recreations of “Giants” (innovators) experiments during their early years in the form of prototypes/games. The focus was on their primary years i.e before their big inventions.
Scott Belsky
This draws inspiration from Scott Belsky’s middle school strategy of turning textbook concepts into visuals for extra credit. To replicate the same idea, I designed a prototype of an interactive website that allows students to practice by drawing their school diagrams.
As shown in the prototype, students will have an option to upload a diagram they need to work on and then recreate it using the site’s drawing tools.
Mark Zuckerberg
This takes inspiration from Mark Zuckerberg’s habit of creating video games from his friends’ drawings. To replicate the same idea, I designed a prototype of an application that allows users to convert their drawings into playable video games.
As shown in the prototype, students will have an option to upload a drawing of their choice, and the application then converts it into a video game
Strategic Game
This Strategic Game, created for Play4Tomorrow, is titled the “Attack Map”. Its main aim is to encourage students to build on and improve existing ideas. The focus of the game is on Facebook, highlighting the company’s neglect of the negative impact Instagram has had on teenage girls, as studies have shown.
Players are challenged to develop projects, games, or experiments similar to those Mark Zuckerberg worked on at the start of his career, with a twist: to do them “better”. Using game characters, such as robots, players work to “attack” Facebook, overcoming challenges and completing projects to progress towards and “take over” Facebook headquarters. This “attack” symbolizes taking action on the issues Facebook ignored.
