Creating a Learning Game Where You Find Countries on the World Map

Problem

This project was sparked by a rather personal observation: It feels rather embarassing to not know where a given country is when hearing about it — be it in the news or when someone is sharing their migration history.

User Stories

As a learner, I want to learn where all the countries are on the world map.

Concept

I decided to build a web game.

Development

On the technical side, I used the project to try my hands at a module-based architecture.

The Product

Right now, the game is available online and played dozens of times every day.

Evaluation

There is a lot of work to be done optimizing the adaptive learning algorithm.

Next Steps

Since the project was launched publically, a steady trickle of feedback, ideas and bug reports is reaching my inbox. Therefore, a part of the future development will simply be iterative improvements.

Closing Words

Even though the game's usage numbers are by no means through the roof, it is my most trafficed project to date. As such, it has taught me a lot about running public web tools and Open Source repositories.