Labster’s Virtual Labs have burst open the possibilities of what science educators can offer students, while addressing some of the steepest challenges in academia today.
Virtual Labs is a live platform that houses an expanding list of Unity-powered laboratory simulations allowing students all over the world to complete online, from their personal devices. Each lab places students in real world scenarios, where they must apply their knowledge to solve real world problems
Role : Game Designer Developer : Labster Release Type : Live Platforms: Mobile, VR, WebGL
Products
Specific Simulations I worked on :
Skeletal Muscle Movement :
Build your own muscle system
Skeletal System :
Solve a missing Person Case
Skin Layers and Organ Anatomy :
Follow a skin cell’s journey
The Peripheral Nervous System :
Create a model of the nervous system
Introduction to the Central Nervous System : Explore your body’s command center
Introduction to the Nervous System : Subdivisions of the nervous system
Gross Function of the Nervous System :
Let your brain learn about itself
Small and Large Intestine Absorption :
A journey from stomach to bloodstream
Microanatomy of a Neuron :
Build your own neurons!
Role Description
Each simulation is produced and developed by a specialized team of scientists and developers before it is subsequently released on the Virtual Labs online catalog.
The teams that create these simulations are essentially rapid game development units that have embedded scientists and pedagogs into the design process in order to shape the educational interactive content and theme of each simulation based on the specifications set between Labster and the client institution.
My main responsibilities as a Game Designer within Labster’s development ecosystem :
Design interactions of various laboratory activities and subjects into an engaging and learning efficient experience
Contribution in the improvement of Labster’s simulation Building tools
Documentation and propagation of emergent interaction patterns and mechanics between projects
Development & Experience
During my involvement with designing for Labster’s products I have applied and honed the following practices and skills :
Keeping a consistent work and task completion rhythm with remote team members and contributors around different time zones and roles on a daily basis.
Deconstructing and reinterpreting complex scientific topics using a limited set of modular interaction mechanics, ensuring creativity within short production timelines.
Communicating solid Game Design, Interactive Narrative, and Procedural Rhetoric methods and intentions, to various team members of different academic disciplines and roles within the production of each project.
Game Design
Educational Game Design and Active Learning :
Labster's pedagogy focuses on Active Learning, engaging students experientially in the learning process. Each simulation consists of procedural activities that involve users in thinking, discussing, investigating, and creating around the topic.
To implement Active Learning, I restructured it into three practical tenets for our multidisciplinary content team:
Active Learning
1. Procedural Rhetoric:
A this rephrasing helped to guide discussions between toolmakers, platform creators, and scientific writers, emphasizing learning through mechanics.
2. "Wax on, Wax off" Effect:
This perspective evaluates simulation activity concepts as a whole, examining how each mechanic practically contributes to the main learning goal.
3. "Show, Don't Tell":
This tenet challenges the scientific writers and the team to adapt dense, rigid theories into accessible and intuitive concepts, particularly for Labster's higher education simulations.
Design implementation:
My typical responsibilities and activities as a Game Designer within a Labster Simulation production cycle would form the following steps :
Study Topic
Team
Brainstorm
Analysis &
Scoping
Flow Design
Prototyping
Asset Design
Implement
Feedback
Refine
Document
Hand Over
Studying "Subject X" to internalize learning objectives, usually identified by the pedagogy department or the client.
Consulting teaching experts to understand how "Subject X" would be taught in a lab or class.
Brainstorm with the entire team on the specific simulation activities, to both to utilise their experience and maximise their sence of owership, and passion
A. Determine how many and how closely each real-lab student action could be expressed using the Labster Simulation Platform's existing interaction vocabulary.
B. Determine which elements of "Subject X" teachings needed to be compressed to fit the simulation's intended playtime scope.
Creating a first draft document and flowchart proposal as a design thumbnail for the educational simulation.
Creating prototypes for each "Learning Activity" (main interaction points).
Identifying interactive elements challenging to express with pre-existing Building Blocks and proposing design solutions.
Blocking out the main beats of the "Subject X" Simulation in-engine, collaborating with developers, content writers, and artists to flesh out the project.
Conducting internal and external playtesting and tweaking.
Refining and expanding overall documentation if new templates, tools, or methods were created during the production of "Subject X."
Handing over the release candidate to the product department
Production Methods and Challenges
Development Cycle :
Challenge:
Labster's average production cycle of 2-3 months would demand efficient distillation of each topic's essence and intricacies.
Creating fitting art, animation, and sound design within this limited timeframe is a significant challenge.
Approach :
Recontextualize the use of conventional tools to tap into open ended game engine functions, to reduce the constant need for novel builder systems
Focus on each teaching topic's core principles rather than replicate its reading materials,
and brainstorm on how to efficiently communicate them
Encourage a more modular development proccess
by creating reusable assets & interaction templates
Platform Development and Release :
Challenge:
During my time at the organization, the Labster Builder, (a proprietary simulation-building editor powered by Unity), lacked some of the more robust features common in other conventional game creators.
Delivering final products with an in-progress tool presented a significant challenge.
Approach :
Share learnings from past productions, and introduce established solutions and workarounds from the game industry, to benefit my education-focused development team.
Utilize some of my game-dev
"low-level" and "hands-on" experience in various production stages to maximize my team's potential within their roles
Foster a more modular development proccess
by creating re-usable assets & interaction templates
Unique Role Challenges and Learnings
Squad-based Creative Direction versus Central Creative Direction :
Challenge:
Rapid catalogue expansion during the global pandemic and the introduction of game designers without a clear role definition led to inconsistent production scopes, design direction, and implementation methods across the content teams
Approach :
The game design circle worked together to introduce various creative pillars based on common learnings from previous simulations across all teams to establish production quality and standards.
These rules were adapted and optimized for our team, with periodic re-examination and iteration to maintain consistency across the organization's output.
The unique limitations and “Hands-on" restrictions of Labster's Game Designer role :
Challenge:
The high-level functionality of the transitioning Builder Platform coupled with my role's limited access based on Labster's pipeline and personnel structure with regards to in-engine assets or scripts made rapid prototyping of particular novel ideas and setups challenging within short production cycles.
Approach :
I developed rapid prototypes of mechanics and unique activities directly in the Unity Engine, using custom-made placeholder scripts and assets consistent with Labster's Builder framework. By doing so, I saved considerable time for team members, providing them with compartmentalized assets compatible with their familiar pipeline. This optimized our team's process without intruding on the content department's current practices
Personal Highlights
During my time at Labster, in addition to contributing to the mission of creating high-quality, affordable educational content, I experienced the following personal highlights:
Rebooting the scrapped Exploration Mode feature :
Exploration Mode, a special interaction mode allowing students to examine objects and their layers, was a scrapped feature.
I drew from UX learnings and worked with different departments within Labster to revive and adapt this concept into a compatible feature for our interaction language, making it suitable for a wide-purpose educational tool like Virtual Labs.
Rethinking and expanding modularity into Level Design patterns for virtual Labrooms :
I had the opportunity to distill various Level Design methodologies into practical, Builder-friendly pattern modules.
This aimed to empower future content creators and in-house artists to produce game industry-level environments within the Labster context.