A Study on Interactive Picturebook Design for Animal Protection Education

Abstract

China has the largest market for illegal wildlife trade, a long history and the traditional culture of trading wildlife products. This culture resulted in the low awareness of reducing the demand of consuming endangered wild animals. This design proposal targets at Chinese users from 9 to 12 and tries to encourage users to think independently about illegal wildlife trade issues and reduce the culture and social influences that increase the wildlife products consuming demands on this age group's users.

To achieve the purpose, this study was conducted in four stages. The first stage is to develop an inspirational story content based on the facts in wildlife trade and the relationship of animal values and human psychological needs.

The second stage is to select the proper endangered animal information's for the targeted user group.

The third stage is to create multimodal contents with symbolic elements and abstract visual expression to determine the degree of emotional involvement and the distance between the contents and the users.

The fourth stage is to design the interaction and the reading experience for the targeted platform to create the rhythm within the picturebook and enhance the level of fun.

The design proposal is an interactive picturebook on smartphone devices. The main story is a fairy tale which talks about the consumers and criminals in the illegal wildlife trade and the in- and external motivations of their behaviors which work together and result in the expanding scale of wildlife trade. The design utilizes different multimodal elements to build the tableaux of the picturebook. Characteristics of print-based books, films, and smartphone reading contents were studied and combined to create the rhythm within the picturebook and enhance the level of fun.

This design proposal focused on the people involved in illegal wildlife trade, which helps readers to understand the motivations of the consumers and criminals and inspires people to think about resolutions from the aspect of people, culture and society. It also encourages readers to think independently about the illegal wildlife trade issues. The design proposal also combined the characteristics from different platforms to create the reading experience on the targeted platform.