"Click either side of your screen, dodge the traffic cone, overcome the stereotype."
Catherine J, Esperanza M, Yarely R, Jennifer C
The objective of the game is to dodge the stereotype that women can’t drive. This stereotype is written on top of the traffic cones. The player dodges the stereotype with their car by tapping the either the left or right side of the screen. If a player runs into a traffic cone, the lose screen pops up with an encouraging message of “It’s okay. You’ll get further next time.”
We want to promote women’s rights and spread awareness of the issue of gender discrimination. We feel that gender stereotypes dominate people’s lives all the time and people do not even realize it because it has become so normalized in our society.
We are spreading awareness by creating a game with the stereotype as an overcomable object thus making the otherwise overbearing issue less daunting.
A technical problem we faced was that the back-end designers along with the graphic designer had the challenge of learning a new platform. We overcame this by deconstructing and experimenting through many tutorials so we could learn how Java functioned. While also asking for help from our mentor when we needed it .
Our whole group found a connection through the interest that we all expressed towards the topic of activism. As women we all know of someone who has experienced some sort of injustice just because they are a women. Therefore we wanted to create a project which would help to spread the awareness of stereotypes that demean women and encourage people to take action. Throughout our research of activism related sites or apps we noticed how most of the information around activism was displayed on websites rather than apps. Even though everyone today owns a smartphone and uses apps in their daily life. By creating Stereotype Drive, we had done something no one else had done before and this was very empowering. Not just in the sense of being an activist but also as a coder because not only did we learn a whole new language in the span of two weeks but we were also creating the app at the same time. We hope this game encourages other women to take action and most importantly have fun.
This project was made by Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program students at Salesforce.org at the USC Marshall School of Business.