In Winter and Spring 2016 the great Dragon Swooping Cough entered the virtual world of Whyville, wreaking chaos with scales, swooping, and great annoyance. In this panel we shared first findings from this engaging and educational epidemic: industry designers, educational researchers, and professional epidemiologists joined together to work to release a virus in a virtual world for kids, promoting experience and engagement with infectious disease. How was the virus designed to create the greatest possible engagement from citizens? What forms of participation and prevention could citizens engage in? What worked educationally? What failed? In the end we invited audience members to reflect on how the virus performed and what could be improved in future iterations. We engaged audience members in a conference-wide epidemic game (the GLS Swooping Spots), simulating experiences of epidemic outbreaks in the virtual world.
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