Introduction

For many students, confusing classes in high school provide a negative first impression of chemistry as a subject (see Appendix A: Primary Research Summary). Convoluted teaching and difficult concepts during this initial exposure often lead students to form negative associations with chemistry and discourage them from pursuing the subject further.

Dr. Mitra Hartmann, a professor of Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University, tasked our team with the creation of a game designed to challenge this mentality by reframing and inventing a new way to approach initial chemistry exposure.

Ultimately, our final design is a role-playing game that introduces elementary and middle school students to fundamental chemistry concepts and prompts interest in further learning through engaging gameplay mechanics. Within the game, the user can battle a variety of chemistry-inspired enemies, find and collect elements, and create molecules to upgrade their weapons and attacks. ChemQuest allows the player to become fully immersed in a vivid, aesthetically pleasing chemistry- themed world. Players can interact with the world by going to the library, blacksmith's shop, alchemist's house, inn, or market. Each building provides a unique in-game experience for the user. In terms of scientific content, ChemQuest seamlessly exposes players to chemistry vocabulary, basic bonding principles, and periodic groups and their properties.

Our research and user testing shows that ChemQuest successfully fufills our mission to engage students and provide a positive experience eiyh chemistry learning (see Appendix B: RPG Mockup User Testing). This website describes the objective, users, and requirements of our design in extensive detail. Each element of our design concept and its supporting rationale is also addressed in the report, and the website concludes with the limitations and suggested improvements of our final design.