Special Effect Brief for Good for Nothing at SHIFT

1. SPECIAL EFFECT BRIEF
Background
SpecialEffect is a charity dedicated to helping people with disabilities enjoy
computer games. For some people using a standard method of input, such as a
regular gaming controller, can be difficult or impossible.
SpecialEffect can help in the following ways:
-­‐ By adapting, developing and modifying hardware and software.
-­‐ By supporting and working alongside hospitals, hospices, and special
schools to find the right games, and controllers, for the individuals they
work with.
-­‐ By setting up and loaning specialist games technology tailored to an
individual’s specific needs.
The Challenge
The current community website (GameBase.info) provides reviews and information
on the accessibility of commercially available games, specifically, concentrating on
such aspects as the control input, speed and difficulty etc. of individual games.
At present the website is in Beta and is running on a free software package Social
GO), which is very limiting in terms of their ambitions for the site.
The team are currently seeking grant funding to support the next development
phase of the Gamebase site.
The focus of this challenge therefore is to prototype what the next evolution of the
project could be and to help develop an all round pitch to help them secure the
funds

2. Specific tasks
-­‐ A more dynamic Gamebase identity, look and feel and communications
narrative – get to the heart of the Gamebase mission and develop a stronger
more articulate communications narrative that makes sense to users, funders
and other key stakeholders and develop a new identity, look and feel which
works on and offline
-­‐ A more user friendly site and layout - The current website is a bit
confusing, and could prove to be daunting to first time users. They would
like visitors to the site to be able to instantly, and easily, find the games
which suit their own interests and abilities.
-­‐ A key challenge is to find the most suitable platform for the future
development of the site, which can be updated easily by the team but which
can also handle the migration o the existing content and become more
community focussed.
-­‐ Need to design and cratye new site layout and wireframes
-­‐ An improved search interface - On the website, in its current form, you are
unable to search under more than one category. Games are listed under
categories such as Xbox360, Audio Games etc. It would be ideal if a visitor
to the site would be able to select more than one category, so that they could
search for, say, an RPG game, with Closed Captions on Xbox360 or a Racing
Game, with Re-mappable Buttons on Playstation 3.
-­‐ Funding pitch: To work with the team to produce a dynamic and robust
funding pitch presentation
-­‐
Things to consider
- Parts of the site dedicated to Reviews, Forums and Home Page (that
provides some introductory information on what we do and maybe
summarises recent activity on the site need to be migrated and part of the
next evolution, the rest can go
- The SpecialEffect identity and design is fixed.