How Are Course Designers Using Characters in E-Learning? #18

Rebecca's example of selecting a team reminded me of something. For what it's worth, here is a rejected pitch we tried for an Inclusion and Diversity course in Flash some years ago. In a triumph of word choice, the client Branding guru deemed the treatment to be "grotesque" and insisted we use photographic avatars, preferably happy.

In this sequence of images, you can see the learner assembling an avatar to express an individual collection of diversity characteristics. I called this a "Diversatar." Hopefully, the learner would identify with their personal Diversatar without having to deal with actual sensitive diversity characteristics like race or gender. The body parts were adapted from the client's various networking equipment. Then the character was put into a scene in which they were the subject of an uncomfortable exchange, allowing all learners to hopefully experience the negative end of discrimination in a safe environment.

https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/jonathanatleson/worksamples/Diversatars/pitch1_1.png
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/jonathanatleson/worksamples/Diversatars/pitch1_2.png
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/jonathanatleson/worksamples/Diversatars/pitch1_3.png

And now for something completely different, I recently came across some people with equipment for heads:
http://www.experis.us/Job-Seekers.htm

As you can see, not grotesque at all! ;-)

Jonathan