AI-Learners | Courtney Manbeck's Portfolio

Development Info

• Role: Designer
• Company: AI-Learners
• Tools Used: ibis Paint X, Figma
• Duration: May—August 2021
• Team Size: 30+

Project Info

• Genre: Educational
• Platform: Browser
• Project Status: Launched

Links

Website
Facebook
Instagram

Game Description

AI-Learners is a Google-funded company which creates personalized educational games for children with cognitive, behavioral, and/or physical disabilities. By using data analytics and artificial intelligence, the company is constantly improving its teaching methods so that every child has an opportunity to learn. Games educate students on topics including arithmetic, logic, shapes, and more.

Contributions

Designed and illustrated game assets and avatar icons
Participated in design discussions to make educational and accessible games
Performed QA to find website bugs
Tested game parameters by editing JSON files

What I Learned

Throughout this internship, I created illustrations with bright colors, lineless shapes, and cartoony proportions. Drawing in this art style taught me how to create art that would appeal to children, as well as how to convey information with simple icons. In addition, designing games for children with disabilities broadened my understanding of accessibility and education. I learned to be aware of factors such as the player's motor skills or visual impairments when discussing game design.

Key Learnings:

To create accessibility in games, developers need to go beyond their own perspectives. At first, I drew icons with whatever color schemes I thought were pleasing, but feedback from teammates taught me that I needed to consider how those colors would look to color-blind players. During game design meetings, we would realize that a game we had made wouldn't be playable for people with certain disabilities. Input from professionals and disabled players showed me that developers need to deeply consider how their design choices could help or hinder accessibility.
When working on a team of artists, frequent communication keeps visuals stylistically consistent. Each artist had a preferred art style, but we needed to be sure that the assets that each of us created individually would look unified when grouped together. Giving each other feedback over Slack or during meetings helped us make sure our art would be consistent with the company's desired style.