As we embarked on our journey to create a mobile app to prevent house fires, we took a look at other mobile apps available. The largest problem we noticed was that while games existed on what to do when a fire occurred, there was a need to create a game instructing kids on everyday actions to take to prevent house fires in the first place. It was something different from what was available!
We gained a lot of inspiration from the app eekoworld on the pbs webiste.. PBS’s game Eeko World provides users with an opportunity to travel through the house and find objects or situations that are not ideal. When a situation is clicked the user is given a choice between two actions such as turning the lights off or leaving them on. Depending on the user’s choice the game then proceeds to either congratulate the user on their choice or give he/she an explanation on why the other action is better.
The eekoworld app gave us an idea of the model we wished to have.
The first app we looked at was called Fire Safety: Help Mikey with 4.7 stars and 22 reviews.
The description: "'Help Mikey Make It Out' is an interactive fire safety game children and their parents or teachers can use together to learn what to do when the smoke alarm sounds. By helping Mikey escape, they learn to check the door before going out into the hallway, not to go out if there is smoke in the hallway, to crawl low under smoke, get out and stay out, and go to a family meeting place."
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| A screenshot from Help Mikey Make it Out |
The Help Mikey app was pretty similar to what we envisioned for our app, with a game to instruct children on fire safety. We also wanted to provide the user with choices and explain why they were good choices, and thought that the Help Mikey app did this in a pretty engaging way.
We also looked at the Complete Fire Safety app with 4.9 stars, 49 reviews -
"Complete Fire Safety is owned by Stephen Shaw. Stephen was a Fire Fighter and Fire Officer in the Tasmania Fire Service for 19 years and was a Training Instructor at the Tasmania Fire Service training complex for 10 years.COMPLETE FIRE SAFETY’s mission is to ensure that each and every workplace and the community are safe by providing cost effective fire safety and equipment products, high quality consultancy services and site specific training programs."
We noticed that this app mostly linked to resources and was geared towards adults. It wasn't very engaging, and focused on workplace fires rather than house fires, which is a problem that impacts everyone.
Then, we looked at the Fire Safety e-Learning app with 4.6 stars, 39 reviews. "This course gives basic fire safety training, instructing the learner in correct procedure in event of a fire.By the end of the e-learning you will have a greater understanding of evacuation procedures,and good housekeeping.The e-learning is a cut down version of the full course which is available to purchasers of the Pro version of the App and those who register online via the Internet.e-Learning WMB can in addition customise this app or create a new app/e-learning course for you to meet your requirements. The e-learning can be launched from any platform (web, app, offline or online) and sync with the Learning Management System, from where the training process can be managed."
This app was also educational and geared towards adults, going a lot into the science of how fires occur with a focus on the workplace. However, we enjoyed that there were animations included to increase interaction.
After comparing these apps and eekoworld, we were able to better make what we wanted. We wanted game with habits like eekoworld, aiming it towards kids like Help Mikey Out, resources like Complete Fire Safety, and interactive activities like the e-learning app. It was all thanks to viewing what had originally happened that we could learn as much as we did.
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