Worcestershire County Council
Project Background
Worcestershire County Council is a local authority in England, offering a range of services to local residents, including education, social care, and transport. With a focus on digital connectivity and innovation, the council has a strong commitment to user-centred design. Past initiatives have included developing online services for booking school and college transport, multi-agency safeguarding hubs, and digital land and property search tools. The council works closely with stakeholders such as the Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership and the Careers and Enterprise Company to enhance careers education across the region.
The challenge
Local pupils want to realise their career paths
The careers team at Worcestershire County Council sought an innovative way to engage students in understanding the variety of career opportunities available to them within the local area. They wanted a solution that would inspire pupils by providing them with information on career pathways, employability skills, and profiles of key employers and sectors. To achieve this, they conceptualised a digital board game, ‘Simply Careers’, which would deliver this information in an engaging and interactive format.
The solution
Following the M5 to open up opportunities
The concept of the game was that the player (student) would navigate their way around ‘the board’ by following a route representing their career journey. The game’s design was inspired by Worcestershire’s local geography, with students navigating a digital map based on the M5 motorway, visiting different zones representing the county’s six districts. Within each district, students engage with various quizzes, videos, and career-related content, earning rewards and points as they progress.
The project
After assessing the user needs and initial game concepts, PDMS developed a prototype using an Umbraco CMS website paired with an Angular front-end. This combination allowed the council to easily manage game content, including text, images, video, and forms, while providing students with a seamless, interactive gaming experience.
Given that many of the planned game spaces contain copy, images, video and forms, Umbraco CMS was used to manage the content for the game spaces, as it is an ideal platform for efficiently managing large volumes of web content.
Angular provides front-end functionality including scoring, zone progress, interactive tools, prompts and avatar selection as it offers a high-performing method of delivering apps and content, without the need to do full page loads each time data is required.
The results
PDMS worked closely with the council to refine the game’s requirements and ensure that the game was intuitive, interactive, and educational. Early user feedback from students and council stakeholders was critical in shaping the final product, and the game prototype underwent several iterations based on this input.
PDMS successfully delivered a working prototype of the ‘Simply Careers’ game, which is now undergoing live trials with students across Worcestershire. The game provides a fun and educational platform for students to explore career opportunities and aspirations in their local area.
With the prototype in place, future development phases are anticipated, including authentication features to allow students to log in, track their progress, and advance to higher levels as they progress through school. The council has received positive feedback on the game's potential to inspire and educate students about career possibilities, contributing to their broader educational goals.
PDMS Testimonial
"Working with Matt and the team from the Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership and Worcestershire County Council was fantastic. It was so great to work with a partnership who are so positively committed to innovation and user-centred design. Thanks to user research and content strategy they had previously carried out, we were able to get started on the design and development of a digital prototype careers game that is now in the test and trial phase with young people across the county."
Jim Rawson Head of UX & Design at PDMS
Client Testimonial
“My team and I found it an absolute pleasure to work with PDMS for the duration of the Simply Careers digital platform build. Suzanne, Jim and the wider PDMS team made sure that our initial concept was actually turned into reality. As this platform was the first of its kind, we had nothing to compare it too, but PDMS ensured that by working together and listening to our constant feedback that we could always find the right solutions without ever compromising the quality of the build. The ability for us to develop a mechanism which allows us to control the content of the platform and build on this over time just added even more value to this project. Young people across Worcestershire and the rest of the country will benefit from this platform for years to come and will help ensure they can fully understand the careers opportunities available to them whilst using technology to support their learning. I would have no hesitation in using PDMS again or recommending them in the future.”
Matt Tope Inspiring Worcestershire Programme Manager, Strategic Careers Hub Lead at Worcestershire LEP
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