An app to fight cancer

Client Cancer Research UK

Sector Health & gaming

Duration One weekend

Scientists have got really good at collecting data but how can they analyse it effectively? This is what we were asked on a Friday evening, with just the weekend to create an app to came up with a solution. Cell Slider had been a huge success, allowing anyone, anywhere to do real research - putting life-changing research into the public’s hands.

Cancer Research wanted to repeat this success with a weekend ‘Game Jam’ spent at Google Campus, London to work on a mobile game to fight cancer. A first of its kind for the UK which brought together teams from Google, Amazon and Facebook and assorted freelancers and scientists under one roof to pitch in together.

As the only designer on the team with five developers I created the UI, and surprised the developers by asking what size and format they would like the assets. I designed the game layout and elements such as the asteroids, spacecraft and background.

Outcomes

1. On the Sunday afternoon the teams presented the working games to the scientists and volunteers. Our game was voted the ‘most likely to be commercially successful’.

2. The released app ‘Genes in Space’ closely resembled the game we designed over just a single weekend.

3. The uptake of the app was a success with over 400,000 downloads, proving that there is a hunger and audience for these types of games.