JFK Exhibit: Cold War Educational Game
Role - Sr. UX Designer
User Experience (Tablet), Cross-functional Collaboration, Storytelling, Visual Design, UI, Art Direction, Illustration, Game Strategy & Design
Overview
“EXCOMM: What’s Your Move?” is a touchscreen game based on “Milles Borne,” a French card game from 1954. Players represent The Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM), which advised President John F. Kennedy during his presidency.
Throughout the game, players learn how the United States and the Soviet Union competed to dominate international affairs. The goal? Score 1,000 points before the USSR while learning about critical Cold War events—the Berlin crisis, the Cuban missile crisis, and the space race.
Building a game from beginning to end
I collaborated closely with developers to concept a game that would be education enough to be in a historical exhibit, intuitive enough for ages 10-90, simple enough for our developers to build, short enough to be able to complete within 10 minutes, but fun enough to keep users engaged.
I pitched various styles of games, coming up for cold war-appropriate themes for each. I drew conceptual sketches and compiled moodboards to pitch them to the museum director.
After finally landing on a digital card game I proceeded to make the game out of paper for extensive testing. I designed the cards, gathered the factoids, sketched and Illustrated all of the final assets used to hand off to developers. We tested the game to make sure it was well balanced and the final product was a quick, fun game that we got many compliments on.
