Wildfire Preparedness Google Doodle Proposal
Overview
Prototyping Resilience is an accessible board game aimed to educate communities on wildfire preparedness. Initially created by Tom Maiorana (associate design professor at UC Davis) alongside an interdisciplinary team of creatives. Featured in NPR, KQED, recognitions and grants _, working in several communities _
Tom came to me with an idea for a project he wanted as a supplement to the main board game. I was given the great opportunity to work alongside two other very talented designers to create a video game that could also be used to teach wildfire preparedness. Tom wanted this game to be completely different in mechanics to the board game, a much more simple and digestible version to the board game. He wanted it to be more accessible as well, without the set-up and forethought.
Project Scope
Create a video game that teaches wildfire preparedness. Must be simple and quick, but still interesting to keep the audience playing and visually appealing. Must be playable by anyone of any age
Very board, up to our team to determine the direction of the game as we worked
My Role
illustrative work, character design, concepting
Team
1 mentor, 3 designers
Timeline
June - Sept 2025
Recognition
Project funded and backed by CalOES (Governor's Office of Emergency Services)
// there are other things too
Research (sprint for learning)
Link to MY research notes.
Looked into CalFire recommended steps for preparedness and evacuation
AI vibe coding game development tools (ethical, within our capabilities)
Game inspiration
** talk about how I emphasized the user in my research. ??? keep or nah
CalFire: how to condense this info in a way that is digestible to the average person, what things do people probably not know, etc
Game inspo: did more in-depth research with any of the games that felt more aligned with what we were looking for
Conceptualization (sprint for learning)
First played with the concept of the Plants v Zombies/tower defense inspired game, our first very solid idea
We were encouraged to do a one week sprint with this idea in order to learn and hopefully draw more inspiration from what we make, not a completely finalized idea. Tom didn’t have very much direction when initially coming to us with this idea, and was hoping we could all work collaboratively and come to find a direction over time.
Was inspired by defensible space diagram that CalFire uses, reminded us of layout for plants vs zombies, worked well with idea of doing different tasks before each wave to make home more defensible, etc
Outlined the mechanics and learning goals, created basic assets, and used FireBase studio to code a prototype
<LINK TO PRESENTATION>, <LINK TO FULL GAME BREIF>
WHAT WE LEARNED
Fundamental features that educational video games can have
Health bar, timed rounds, enemies, end goal, learning objectives, replayability, easy and self explanatory mechanics, nice visuals, score, making rounds increasingly hard or adding obstacles, etc
How to use firebase studio to create a simple game
Good idea in theory, but what could we do to make a game fun and interesting for the user, as well as educational enough without boring them?
Redirection
Found a lot of inspiration from Google Doogle games, checked every box for the scope of our project (from initial research phase)
Entertaining, educational, for any audience, cute and visually appealing, simple and short.
Thought about the idea of submitting a formal proposal to the Google Doodle team
Research (again)
Researched different Google Doodle games
Highlight prominent ones
LINK TO RESEARCH NOTES AGAIN
How to submit a proposal
What occasions we could propose for our google doodle idea
Picture and link to research figjam?
TOP ideas
May as Wildfire Awareness Month
Celebrating different wildfire protection crews
Usual themes, tones, etc of google doodles
Holidays, awareness, culture, education, history, inspiring, people
Uncontreversial
Our idea seemed to check the boxes to possibly be considered for a google doodle
Conceptualization (again)
Two main stories
Animal based > three little piggies
Big fire concept
<VIEW THE FULL CONCEPTS HERE>
Thought process was to create a robust story and reel it back to make it simple enough for a google doodle
Redirection (again), games were too complex/too many of them & storylines were too in-depth
Created a basic infinite runner game based on one of the games from the big fire story
Play as a bear, running to collect items as u are evacuating from a fire
Simpler, quick, something that could be understood immediately without having to invest a lot of time into it, but still establishes important educational points in digestible way
Putting everything together
Storyboarding, moodboarding, figuring out the right vibe for this game
Creating the “Google” title screen
Researching other infinite runners
Creating an ambiguous character that could be relatable to all audiences
Creating the final proposal to send to Google
<PRESENTATION HERE>