Design an interactive resource about human anatomy that can be used as an educational tool for 3-5 year old children.

Why? To spark an interest in children at a young age. To simplify complex information and help young children understand how the human body functions.

How? Using engaging design and simply worded content to effectively communicate with 3-5 year old children.

What?I will be delivering the concept through a website. The website will feature downloadable line drawing that the children can colour in.

CONCEPT.

RESEARCH.Competitor WebsitesI looked at a variety of websites that offer similar information to the one I plan on designing. The websites I found all offered useful information but the designs did not engage the viewer. Through research I found that the website I plan on designing would serve a purpose.

Contextual ReferencesOnce I realised that a website helping young children learn about anatomy could be useful, I researched previous at-tempts at giving non-humans anatomy.

Cartoon CharactersThe next stage researched was famous cartoon characters. I wanted to see if they had any similarities between them that would help me in designing the character for my website.

DEVELOPMENT.Character DesignI had to decide what my character would look like. To do this I made numerous sketches, some of them can be seen below, all of them can be seen on my design practice blog. I named the character Baby Keef, I feel this name is funny and cute.

Typeface DesignAt the start fo the project I had the intention of designing my own typeface to use on buttons in the website. I felt that a bubble typeface would engage the audience best.

Above is the final outer baby keef. I will need to design the skeletal, muscular and organ characters for keef. I chose to use a clean vector aesthetic as there will be a download page on the website, where the children will be able to colour in the line drawing versions of the character.

The final typeface that will be used in the website.

I tested a variety of type styles by sketching the name out on a sheet of paper. The bubble type style began to stand out to me at this point. I decided to use an uppercase bubble typeface, I felt the lettering was more effective when using uppercase letters.

The next step was to draw the full set of letters for the typeface. As the type will be used for buttons only there is no need for me to include punctuation or any extra glyphs in the typeface.

DESIGN.Website Layout and FunctionThe website is aimed at young children, for this reason the website needs to be very easy to navigate and use. For this reason I have chose to limit the amount of pages to two. Using an image gallery on the home page to show the information about the organs and other parts of the anatomy.

Home PageThe home page will contain three columns. The first column will feature the main image of baby keef. The middle column will contain text explaining how anatomy works and the different that make up the humna anatomy. The third column will be a series of thumbnails that will open up as an image gallery.

Image Gallery PageThe image gallery will expand to fill the full page for all of the images. This will keep a uniformed gallery, which will be easier/less confusing for the user.

Downloads PageThe download page will contain three columns. The first column will contain text explaing how to download the colouring in sheets. The second and third columns will contain the buttons that enable you to download the colouring in sheets.

PROPOSALS.ToyA toy that can be opened like a Russian Doll. The inside of the doll will contain the muscle, organ and skeletal versions of baby keef. The toy could be ordered by schools or parents and used as a hands on educational device.

Anatomy Builder GameIf I had more coding abilities I would have included an interactive game in the website. In the game you would be able to build a character and an organ system, the character will be able to be individualised, this will enable the user to make a personal avator come the end of the game.

3D ViewIdeally I would have had the images of Baby Keef as 3D images you could turn and rotate to get a 360º view.

Stop MotionAt the beginning of the brief I wanted to create a stop motion aninmation on the website. I had to discontinue this idea due to time and financial limitations. If I had more to focus on this brief individually/this was a collaborative brief I would have been able to create the stop motion as I have the technical knowledge needed to create a stop motion animation.