PANCHAYATI
Project Details
Team Project - Anubhav, Aryamaan, Kanishk and Raj
Medium: Blender, fusion 360, photoshop, illustrator, 3D printing
Duration: 4 weeks
Educational Topic: CBSE class 7- Environmental Studies
Design Challenge
For today’s generation of growing children, games have become an integral part of their everyday lives. Be it physical or digital games, it engages the child for a long period of time, sometimes bordering addiction. How can we create a game that, along with being fun and intuitive, provides education and learning metrics to the child, without feeling like reading books and rote memorisation? The answer came in the form of board games.
Early Concepts and Brainstorming
Our team sat down to brainstorm on the topic given to us. Educational topics are a hard sell to kids, since they always try to get away from studies when they try to game or play. We started with a few concepts, slowly pinning down two ideas out of which, Panchayati (codename - village builders) was finally chosen. Once this was finalised, we sat down to understand what would work, what might fail, how to make it intriguing and engaging to kids, since they have the most fickle attention span for complex topics.
Manufacturing Game Pieces and Board
For the manufacturing process, we tried to make it as sustainable as possible. Resued cardboard, newspaper and leftover paints and glue were used for the box. For the components such as board and the pieces, we opted for 3D printing process. the 3D printing trial produced high quality pieces than those made out of paper and cardboard, so we switched to 3D printing process for the same.
Final Board Game
After a successfull trial run with the 3D printer, we managed to create all the pieces of the board game using the same process. For the board, we opted for a 2D board with colours depicting regions instead of creating a 3D board, which would have increased cost of production and made the project non-viable. The final product is as shown below, a colourful, vibrant and engaging game that educates children while they are having fun.
Final Game Testing with School children
After the completion of the board game, we tested it out with the targeted demographic of school students and children between the age of 10-15. The testing yielded great results, with the students and children being actively involved and enjoying the game. During the gameplay, we identified some pain points that could be worked upon and improved for a better and smoother gameplay.
