First Aid Action Hero

45 minutes annually isn’t enough time to learn/teach First Aid. St John Vic instructors found on their return to classrooms, they were repeating instead of progressing lessons with students. Conduct’s challenge: design a digital tool to reinforce kids’ First Aid training at home. We were tasked with creating an inclusive, accessible game. The game would make learning fun and make concepts ‘stick’. The game would build children’s’ confidence to act as a first responder in a First Aid emergency. As an added bonus, the game would give hearing impaired and homeschooled children access structured, quality First Aid education.

Keeping users in focus, we first identified age-appropriate groups and their learning capabilities (to test) before devising an approach to match learning objectives. Students and First Aid instructors were interviewed; their requirements informing design decisions. Conduct and St John co-hosted sessions testing prototypes of increasing fidelity with students in grade three. To ensure adoption, engagement and usability, the game was continually updated to incorporate students’ feedback. Although developed to supplement classroom training, comprehensive tests confirmed, kids with no prior First Aid training were understanding (and correctly recalling) the steps in St John’s DRSABC action plan after playing the game.

Children spend upwards of 32hrs/week on an electronic device; First Aid Action Hero leverages this screen time for educational purposes. St John Vic understood ‘learning by having fun’ was the best approach to expand kids’ problem solving and memory skills. This game is designed to make First Aid training enjoyable. An estimated 10,000 Australian children (6,000+ downloads) have played First Aid Action Hero since Q42018. This initiative, started by St John Ambulance Victoria, will be rolled out internationally later this year. With multi-language variations in the pipeline, First Aid Action Hero is set to reach a new audience of millions.

St John Ambulance’s DRSABC Action Plan below: ========== (check for surrounding) Danger (see if there’s a) Response Send for help (check patient’s) Airways (check if patient is) Breathing and (administer) CPR. ========== First Aid Action Hero includes captions to cater for hearing impaired children and considers the smaller gestures from the hands of a younger audience. It was designed (and tested) to be intuitive and easy to navigate so kids without access to a professional First Aid instructor could still takeaway key concepts. While the app is no substitute for formal First Aid training, it introduces a suite of scenarios where players are required to analyse before acting. Throughout the course of the game, players learn: • How to assess an emergency situation • How to assist a sick/injured patient • The correct number to call for an ambulance • Actions to take while waiting for paramedics arrive The app supports all modern devices on Android and iOS and was built on Unity - allowing for the maintenance of one, infinitely scalable code base that can be deployed to multiple platforms (including desktop) in the future.