ASTRONAV

INSTRUCTOR

Matthew McGlynn

INSTITUTION

Astronav is a website that is aimed to educate kids on outer space. As a user of Astronav, you are also an astronaut traveling through space. You must learn as much as you can and answer every question prompted in order to continue your journey. I was challenged with making this website heavily interactive with the user, while designing compelling, smooth animations

TYLER SCHOOL OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE

We were tasked with creating a heavily interactive website, with unique animations, and UI kit, all backed by user research.

After about two weeks of concepts and brainstorming, I chose to create a space-themed website. But did not have a full scope on precisely what. After researching, I found that many schools use websites to educate kids—websites like PBS, National Geographic for Kids, CoolMathGames, and Wonderopolis. With everything we do being on computers, I wanted to create an educational website where elementary students can learn about the planets in our solar system. 

Many schools have embraced incorporating technology into the classroom, whether it is completing and submitting assignments online or doing research online, most teachers rely heavily on the internet to run their classes. In an article written by Kristen Purecell, Judy Buchanan, and Linda Friedrich who are researchers for the Pew Research Center, they found that 92% of teachers say the internet has a major impact on accessing resources for teaching. They also found that 45% of teachers allow their students to use laptops or tablets in the classroom. Although, about 85% of teachers say that they still are looking for new ways to incorporate technology into their classrooms.

After doing more research on educational websites, I found that there are not many kid friendly websites that teach about space. Most of the websites are very wordy, with little to no graphics or animations. I thought back to when I was in elementary school and my teacher taught a lesson on space. The content was exciting and fun, but her only option to teach it was to show multiple YouTube videos and find a plethora of other mundane and wordy websites that were not captivating the young minds of me or my classmates.

Astronav is a website that gamifies learning. With fun animations and user friendly graphics, I intend on making a website that kids have fun using while learning about space.

USER PERSONA
ICONS/GRAPHICS
BUTTONS
TYPEFACES
PRIMARY LOGO

The best website I found for an educational website was NASA’s very own website. It has features that are very similar to ones I have, but like the others, the designs are not appealing. The 3D visuals are very realistic and create an immersive experience, but are very glitchy and does not provide a great user experience.

WORDMARK

As an Astronav user, you are an astronaut exploring space. To make the experience immersive as possible, I made the animations seem as if you are in a spaceship, giving you the ability to fly close to a planet, then into its atmosphere, and then ultimately land on it while you learn more and more as you travel.