Space for Children | ESA Space Solutions

Objectives of the service

“Space For Children” is an innovative medical edutainment experience, based on Interactive Reality solution and playable by smartphones and tablets with iOS and Android operating systems.

Through Fanta-Comedy interactive mini-stories (starring real actors, not 3D models), Space for Children allows young users to acquire fundamental information about the difficult context in which they find themselves (coronavirus outbreak), during their isolation time (for quarantine restriction) in a healthy and educative way, by interacting through an engaging and entertaining storytelling with the protagonists and their stories.

The main objective of this interactive experience is to convert the perception of the Coronavirus Outbreak of children and young people (which it has been shown have generated stress, anxiety, fears, etc.).

By recreating -thanks to gamification- a “comfort zone” for children, we can collect valuable information and give doctors and professionals the opportunity to analyze the emotional needs and the psychological support to be offered to children and the family community.

Users and their needs

The challenges of “Space for Children” are

to provide both citizens and professionals with a new digital educational and psychological tool to gain greater knowledge of the effects of the Covid19 epidemic in the community of children and their families and to give access to qualitative and quantitative data on psychological and emotional perception
to demonstrate that Space for Children is definitely a useful and innovative support service both from a technological and medical-scientific point of view.
to demonstrate that the geolocation of users, obtained thanks to ESA’s asset integration technology, is one of the fundamental criteria of the Space for Children solution to convey the right message in the right way to the right children and young people.

Filtering and interpreting in the correct way notions and information related to Covid Outbreak means contributing to recreate a “comfort zone” that the emergency has destabilized for the children&kids community. Not all the children&kids respond to the same stimuli and suggestions both in terms of learning and emotionality: the discomfort produced by a modus informandi not suited to the profile and age of very young people is too often underestimated, and risks amplifying in the consciousness of the child/kid that feeling of discomfort already induced by the emergency situation and its aftermath.

For this reason it is important that the contents are correct and validated by a team of experts in the field of pediatrics and child/kid caring, just as it is important that the contents are engaging and interactive: through the right calibration of the storytelling elements and of the information and psychological support techniques, the contents of Space For Children, changing according to who uses them, how they are used, where they are used, will be a valid ally in facing Covid Outbreak and the changes that will result in the life of our children&kids community

Service/ system concept

An absolute novelty is that, contrary to what happens in traditional digital video games, in Space for Children the child will also interact with real live actors, filmed in live action and responding to the viewer's commands in a way that has never been done before.

The player will live an unprecedented, immersive, live-action video experience that, unlike augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), will allow him/her to enter the story and real places, controlling real situations and actors.

It is an educational game, because through the telling of a story and by stimulating the young users to interact with a dreamlike, fantasy world, notions and explanations about the current emergency situation and the correct behaviour to adopt will be transferred.

With simple gestures or finger movements on the touch-screen, young users will be able to change the development of the plot, decide what actions the protagonist will have to perform or choose the answer he/she will have to give.

Hypex's patented software will make it possible to transform the inputs received through smartphones and tablets into instructions that will determine the evolution of the video clip. The result is that each actor, depending on the gesture made by the child on the mobile device, will act on the screen in different ways and the narrative evolution will adapt to the choices made.

The script, simple but perfectly targeted, was developed together with paediatricians and child psychologists from the Gaslini Hospital, to study in detail the investigative and "therapeutic" points to be introduced into the story so that from the "modus interagendi" useful information can be drawn to define a general psychological outline of our young generations.

Space Added Value

Components of the product supporting the product benefits are

Geolocation

of the users, obtained thanks to ESA assets integration technology, is one of the fundamental criteria involved in the Space for Children solution to deliver the right message in the right way at the right children and kids.
As each restriction policy changes the behavioral approaches and guidelines that citizens must adopt, then the platform will adapt the information to be communicated to users.

Interactive Reality

Contrary to what happens in traditional video games, in Space for Children the user will not interact with 3D models but with real actors, in live action shooting, who will act on the wishes of the viewer in a completely new way.
This unique added value of interactive live action shooting amplifies the degree of involvement and immersion of the user along with a more efficient empathy and identification between the users and the protagonists.