Interactive & Visual - Honours
App Forge is a fun card game designed to raise awareness of how addictive app design can negatively impact mental health. Players will build their own app using the cards they collect and compete against their friends to gain app points, mental health points, and users. Only the players with balanced platforms will win.
As digital platforms have become a part of everyday life, their cultural, political, and economic significance have increased rapidly. The demand for user-generated information has pressured designers to increase the addictiveness of their platforms. To extend usage, harmful psychological theories are employed such as, endless scrolling, fear of missing out (FOMO), or flow theory. These often have a negative impact of the mental health of the user.
App Forge aims to raise awareness of this serious issue through a fun, card-collecting, app-building game. Players will design their own app using design cards and compete against friends and family as they try to obtain app points, mental health points, and users. The goal is to build a balanced platform that values mental HP as well as app points. Through this fun experience, players will learn about addictive app design and its social impact.
Alexandra Dunkley is a designer and illustrator. She blend hers passions for creating art with her expertise in interactive and visual design to create fun and dynamic experiences. Humanity is at the core of Alex's design philosophy and tightly wound into both her process and aesthetic. She practices a human-centred design approach to create emotionally impactful and playful designs that seek to improve how we learn, share, and interact with each other and our environment. She is inspired by our innate ludic nature and by the power of the visual language to convey meaning past many barriers. This is expressed in her work through a bold use of colours, expressive lines, and anthropomorphic illustrations. It is her belief that through humanity-driven design, she can create visual experiences that excite and move people.