maybe.for.you. ™ Interactive Brand Experiences

Just like a real vaccine, accessibility is the key to success.

The name "Center for Disease Control" doesn't exactly conjure up images of fun and games. But in this case, that's exactly what they wanted. In an effort to teach and entertain their visitors about flu vaccinations, the CDC asked Armchair Media and maybe.for.you. to develop an interactive quiz for their website.

Armchair Media had a clear vision of what they wanted the quiz to look like: an experiential game using the theme of a syringe. Brainstorming with their designers, we envisioned a game experience that took place inside the barrel of a vaccination syringe. As the quiz progresses, the level of vaccine in the syringe fills up, and the text questions seem to dissolve into the solution, while the answers drift by.

Because the CDC is a government-affiliated agency, the information on their website needs to be easily available to everyone: users with older computer models, those with limited motion ability, those with different browsers, and those with vision impairments. With these parameters in mind, we knew that our syringe design needed to be accessible, while not by compromising design. We worked with designers and strategists to create a rich Flash interface that could easily be accessed in a variety of different situations. This was quite a challenge, since Flash animation often resists attempts to be widely accessible.

With an eye to our theme, we developed animated transitions between questions that reinforced the illusion that visitors were inside a syringe. These could be viewed by a large variation of browsers and screen readers. Overall the finished quiz managed to be usable, experiential, but still consistent with the look and feel of the CDC website. The final widget turned out to be a great combination of beauty and brains - an elegant design and an accessible product.