Journi – Adventures in Road Safety

In Australia, road trauma is the leading cause of death in 1-14 year olds, with tweens/ younger teens showing the highest increase (a worrying 12% average change per year). Unlike younger children, tweens are at an age where they're increasingly navigating road environments solo - and yet, their brains' pre-frontal cortex, which regulates impulse control and planning, is still a work-in-progress. Our challenge was to create a program that would genuinely engage and change the behaviour of this distractible, hard-to-impress group at a pivotal moment in their development, by building their critical thinking skills and helping them make better judgment calls.

Our design solution was based on rigorous research into tween learning styles and our own focus groups with teachers and students. Studies consistently show that tweens have short concentration spans, learn better when content is highly visual and relatable, and retain knowledge when they’re able to interact with the lesson, while our audience research pointed to the graphic novel as one of their favourite forms of content. So, we created a learning experience that combined these elements: an interactive learning platform with gamified tasks and bitesize quizzes, delivered as an animated graphic novel with relatable school-age characters they could follow.

With over a quarter of Queensland’s state primary schools and over 11,300 students signed up to the program in the first year, the potential for Journi to impact behaviour change and reduce the risk of road trauma among tweens long-term is significant. Feedback from students and educators has been overwhelmingly positive, with many of the schools who participated in 2025 returning with their 2026 student cohorts, indicating strong retention and continued confidence in the program. Our longterm goal is to adapt Journi for other state markets, each of which has its own unique set of road safety challenges and environments.

The experience delivers interactive learnings across four ‘chapters’, covering off a range of different road safety environments from bikepaths and footpaths to roads and level crossings, all delivered via the relatable storyline of our two protagonists: Archie, an easygoing Grade 6 student, and his friend Alex, a tweenage alien exchange student visiting earth. Each chapter features multiple animated sequences, interspersed with games and quizzes, that tell a linear story (for example “School” follows Alex on her as she navigates potential hazards travelling to and from school). Interactive elements mimic UX patterns students are already familiar with such as drag-and-drop, sorting cards, sliders and scratch-to-reveal. Content was developed in close consultation with teachers and education experts, with curriculum alignment and accessibility front-of-mind. Adaptable to a range of learning levels and styles, each module is designed to fill a typical hour of classroom teaching. Because every classroom is different (and technology varies), modules were designed to allow maximum flexibility, with options to deliver content in a teacher-led setting, individually or in smaller groups. As privacy laws prevent the collection of identifiable student data, we developed a multi-step sign-in process for educators to allow them to record students’ progress without requiring data collection.