Operation Outbreak
Improving an educational app that helps students understand pandemics in a much fun and interactive way.
Introduction
Operation Outbreak (OO) is an innovative mobile app that uses Bluetooth technology to simulate the spread of a virtual pathogen. Designed for iOS and Android, the app transforms pandemic education into an immersive experience for high school students, blending real-world interactions with digital decision-making. Players navigate outbreak scenarios by making choices such as quarantining, wearing masks, and keeping their avatars healthy while engaging with peers offline.
Note: This app features two distinct interfaces - one for school simulations, designed by the Fathom Design group, and another for research simulations, designed by our team at Colabo. The Research interface is now evolving into a new app, with a name change to "Epidemica". This is still in progress and has not been rolled out yet. To avoid any confusion, I am sticking to the current name, "Operation Outbreak," as of April 19, 2025.
My Role
Avatar Design & Gamification Strategy – Enhancing engagement through character design and interaction.
Along with that I was also responsible for User Research & Testing, Wireframing & Prototyping, Illustration & Animation
Team
2 Designers
2 Engineers
Timeline
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Defining the problem
The previous version of Operation Outbreak lacked the interactivity and gamified elements needed to captivate students. Retention dropped without engaging design and incentives, limiting the simulation’s educational impact. Additionally, avatars, the digital representations of players, needed a complete redesign to better align with user preferences and enhance immersion.
Problem statement
How Might We make Operation Outbreak more engaging and interactive for users while enhancing avatar personalization?
Research
Before redesigning, we analyzed past user feedback from post-simulation sessions in various educational institutions. These insights were gathered from 50+ participants across 2 schools post-simulation. Here’s what we discovered:
76% found the app "Easy" or "Very Easy to Use."
70%+ found it useful for understanding pathogen spread.
While the app was easy to use and effective in teaching pathogen spread, users highlighted key areas for improvement, particularly in engagement and avatar design.
😐 60% of users said that the avatars felt static and unmemorable.
Students wanted avatars to feel more alive and responsive, like they were part of the game, not just static characters. They suggested features like health indicators or animations that show when an avatar is infected.
"The avatars feel very basic. If they had more expressions or animations, it would make the game more fun."
"It would be cool if our avatars evolved or changed based on how well we handled the outbreak, kind of like a reward system."
"I didn’t feel connected to my avatar—it was just there. If I could change its appearance or see it react, I’d be more invested."
🥱 Lack of incentives reduced motivation to play.
Some users expressed that without a reward system, there was little motivation to continue engaging with the simulation. They wanted to feel a sense of progress or accomplishment tied to their decisions.
📉 Engagement dropped post-infection due to lack of continued challenge.
While initial gameplay intrigued users, many lost interest after getting "infected" in the simulation. Without evolving tasks or incentives, the experience felt flat beyond that point.
These insights helped us pinpoint exactly where the experience was failing and where we had the greatest opportunity to reimagine how users connect, engage, and remain motivated throughout the simulation.
Competitive Analysis
As someone new to game design, I explored popular character-driven mini-games like Tamagotchi and Neopets to better understand how playful interactions, avatar care, and feedback loops drive engagement.
While there were a few direct competitors in the educational pandemic space, these games offered useful patterns around:
🎨
Avatar Personalization
Players feel more invested when they can shape their character’s look and identity.
🎭
Emotional Feedback
Animations and small visual cues make avatars feel alive and reactive.
🔁
Cause & Effect Loops
Actions like feeding or ignoring a pet trigger visible consequences, reinforcing user agency.
Ideation
Before diving into sketches, I focused on improving two core aspects of the experience:
The Avatar
The avatar plays a central role in communicating health status and emotional cues, making it essential to design one that feels both functional and alive.
Consistent Engagement
To avoid drop-off mid-simulation, we needed to introduce meaningful actions, feedback, and small rewards that reflect real-world pandemic behaviors.
While my co-designer focused on exploring gameplay features like reward systems and point mechanics, I led the avatar design direction, ensuring they felt emotionally resonant, visually clear, and reflective of user behavior.
Avatar Design
Early research revealed that users felt disconnected from their avatars, they appeared static, lacked emotional feedback, and didn’t reflect user behavior in a meaningful way. Since avatars were central to the simulation experience, I focused my ideation on making them more expressive, intuitive, and engaging.
I began with rough sketches exploring how subtle shifts in facial expressions, posture, and color could represent different health states—ranging from healthy to infected to game over. While I had no prior experience designing characters, especially for a mobile game, this pushed me to think visually and emotionally at the same time. It was a challenge I really enjoyed.
Initial concepts exploring avatar design.
As ideation evolved, we and stakeholders aligned on using Bauhaus-inspired aesthetics to guide the avatar system, which is abstract, geometric, minimal, yet deeply functional.
Creating a Framework
Following the above framework, I created a set of 5 unique avatars that would get randomly assigned to the users. Since the main role of the avatar is to convey the user's health status during the simulation in a engaging manner, I also created relevent animations for each of them. The character states included :
Using the framework, I designed 5 unique avatars built from the same geometric structure. These were randomly assigned to users to create a sense of ownership and replayability.
Each avatar supports 6 animated states based on a user’s in-game behavior. These states make health status intuitive and reinforce user decisions visually.
Avatar States:
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Healthy (with PPE)
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Vaccinated (no PPE)
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Sick (with PPE)
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Severely Sick (with PPE, degraded visuals)
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Game Over (no PPE)
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Escaped (no PPE, skipped simulation)
Homescreen design iterations
Data Portraits
I also designed a feature called Data Portrait, a shareable data visualization that gives users a unique snapshot of their status and journey through the simulation. Inspired by the concept of NFTs, the idea was to create something personal, visual, and ownable - a digital memento of their experience.
To explore the best visual approach, I experimented with different formats - from playful sunburst diagrams to more complex network visualizations - before landing on a design that clearly communicated connections and infection paths.
Putting it all together: Final UI
The final UI brings together the key pillars of this redesign: avatar-centered interaction, real-time feedback, and a clean, distraction-free interface that supports learning and decision-making.
Every screen was designed to make the avatar the emotional and functional anchor of the experience, communicating health status at a glance while encouraging users to stay engaged throughout the simulation.
For the final Data Portrait, we chose a transmission network design that visualizes each user’s connections during the simulation. This format offered a clear and engaging way to reflect on their role within the outbreak.
The network answers questions like:
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How many participants were you connected to during the simulation?
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How did the virtual pathogen likely spread through your network?
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Where did you fit in the chain of transmission? (Were you infected? Did you infect others?)
This animated transmission map turns anonymized proximity data into a moment of reflection, highlighting how quickly a virus can move through a community, even through brief or indirect contact.
Testing & Impact
I had the opportunity to observe the redesigned simulation in action during a school rollout, shadowing students as they interacted with the new avatars and features. Their responses offered valuable real-world insights and immediate feedback.
Testing Results
✅ Avatars felt more personal and engaging, with students asking for customization and upgrades.
"I loved my character, it would be awesome if we could customize it more, like change clothes or accessories.”
“It would’ve been more fun if we could change how our characters looked.”
✅ Gamified features like the shop, quarantine option, and survival mechanics kept students engaged
"I liked how you could collect items and try to survive, it made it feel like a real game.”
“The quarantine option was realistic. It made me think about actual decisions people had to make during COVID.”
⚠️ ‼️ Some systems felt unclear or frustrating, like item durations and point logic
"The mask only lasted an hour? That felt too short and kind of stressful.”
“Why was I sick for so long even after taking the medicine?”
“The point system should have more ways to earn points, not just quizzes.”
⚠️ ‼️ Post-infection experience felt flat, with players wanting more to do after “game over”
"I liked how you could collect items and try to survive, it made it feel like a real game.”
“The quarantine option was realistic. It made me think about actual decisions people had to make during COVID.”
These observations confirmed that the redesign successfully improved emotional connection and overall engagement while also surfacing key areas for refinement in future iterations.
Next Steps
I’m currently exploring avatar customization to give users more ownership and emotional connection. This is still a work in progress, but I’d love to talk more about it if you’re interested!
