After talking with the client, the team decided to move forward with the idea of interactive storytelling (instead of a “game”).
For the first scene, the background would be a baby room in a hospital. A black girl is just born. There would be doctors and nurses around the baby bed holding some documents. When you hover the mouse on these interactive objects, a windows would pop out and show the data of maternal mortality rates as well as the reason behind it.
Second scene is for the black girl who is a little older now. The background scene is at her home. Although her family is poor, the vibe is warm and happy since they love each other. We would show the data of poverty rate in Pittsburgh. Also the subsequent results of poverty would be mentioned. For example, abuse from peers which would lead to the next scene.
Third scene happens at a classroom hallway. After years of being bullied by other kids, the black girl can’t help it anymore. She finally decides to fight for her dignity. However, because of the inequity treatment and racism from the teacher, even she is doing the right thing, she is still referred into juvenile justice process which makes her be suspended from school. For this scene, we want the visitors be sympathetic for this little girl so they could understand how unfairly the black girls are treated in juvenile system and how urgently they are in need of help.
The fourth scene happens in an empty classroom with a blackboard with some sex education content. Because of the suspension, she is not able to attend school, that’s why her chair is empty. When hover on the chair and blackboard, we would make the most use of the classroom scene to show the data of the lack of sex education and the subsequent results. But the result of lack of sex education is not related to our main story.
And the last scene is about the little girl gets some help from BGEA, like the community based service or after school programs. With these supports, the girl learns how to deal with the problems she has at school. And finally become a better and happier person. The purpose of this scene is to show the positive side of the black girls as well as the excellent job BGEA has done for African-American community. We could enrich this scene after we have more materials about these programs.
The team will start from the scene #3 (referral rate). The art assets were created and put on the website at https://williamj-in.github.io/bgea-project/.
