NEW ENGLAND ECONOMIC ADVENTURE
Immersive Exhibit
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An early home page from July 2004. Each oval featured a rollover effect
and active link to interior pages.
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The home page in July 2014.
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Taking a leadership
role in economic education in the New England region,
the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston worked with us to
develop a learning experience intended to appeal to
middle school audiences. For this potentially difficult-to-engage
age group, we proposed that the exhibition component
of the experience be relatively small, with the main
attraction being a compelling, competitive, economic
decision-making game played by the entire visiting group.
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Game design for
the New England Economic Adventure combines live facilitation
with large format media and game devices, such as a giant
lever to spin a ‘wheel of fortune.’ Each player’s seat
is outfitted with a small PDA-like interactive pad that
enables them to make decisions and investments.
![](graphics/neea3.jpg)
At key moments
in the game, a selected participant pulls a lever to
set a projected “wheel of fortune” in motion. These
Risk Rounds reveal that unanticipated events leading
to financial and personal losses have been a part of
business in every period of history. For example, in
1813, pirates and storms at sea posed constant risks
for Boston’s shipping entrepreneurs who stood to lose
not only a ship and cargo, but often a family member
overseeing the voyage.
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The game plays
out in three distinct eras in which New Englanders reinvented
their economy. For each, decision-making scenarios are
dramatized by actors in period attire and settings.
Each segment ends with the actors turning to the audience
to ask what decisions they intend to make. Players’
investments, entered into each person’s own PDA, are
updated as the game unfolds, and at the end, a game
winner identified.
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