NEW ENGLAND ECONOMIC ADVENTURE
Immersive Exhibit

An early home page from July 2004. Each oval featured a rollover effect and active link to interior pages.

The home page in July 2014.

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.

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.

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.

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.