B.EYJA

Challenge

• The last few years have seen an increase in the amount of immigrants moving to Iceland. However, Icelandic language teaching hasn’t evolved to respond to the growing demand and diverse needs of people learning the language.

• Many migrants experience a lack of opportunities in practising the spoken language outside of formal courses.

• There are few affordable resources that focus on helping people to grow beyond beginner level, and to find confidence with spoken Icelandic and self-expression.

• This results in immigrants being under-employed, or employed at a level that does not match the qualifications they may have gained in their home countries.

Process

• In-depth interviews with 20 immigrants to Iceland about their experience of learning the language.

• Development of 3 user profiles. The group chosen as a target for this project are people with some basic understanding of the laguage but low confidence to use it in everyday life.

• Co-design and rapid feedback on early concepts.

• Ongoing game design and prototyping based on the core needs identified for the target audience.

Outcome

• A modular collaborative board game composed of 6 mini language tasks where player practice basic sentence building, grammar, storytelling, expressing opinions and describing places and objects.

• The game is designed to help people find flow and get over their fear of making mistakes.