Problem

Our client, the “Förderverein KonTEXT Leseprojekt” is a student run social project at HM that wants to motivate young people who were convicted of a crime to read. Once outside of prison, some are required by judges to participate in this project. The reading done as part of the project is intended to make young convicts think and reflect and to reinforce and develop their reading skills and education. In short, KonTEXT aims to have a positive impact on their life and acts in the area of crime prevention.

However, the youths who are required to take part at KonTEXT tend to find reading books tedious and the process of learning through reflection bleak or overwhelming. Typically, they would prefer anything else over spending time with a book. This is also due to the fact that they are forced to read and do not do it by their own choice. Our target group currently does not feel free enough to decide about where, when, and what to read.

Our challenge, therefore, was to motivate young convicts to read and to successfully participate in the project. A successful participation in the project could have lasting effects not only for the convicts but the society too, resulting e.g. in a reduced risk of relapse. However, motivating unmotivated teenager can be a real challenge.

Approach

The idea was to develop an app that would motivate young convicts to read. The app designed by the student team teaches people from a variety of backgrounds to concentrate for a greater length of time and to reflect critically on themselves in a fun way. It motivates and encourages young people to read and learn through a digital game. In addition, it gives an insight into various topics linked to the offense they committed. Each user who solves a simple gameplay-oriented challenge correctly gains an advantage that is reflected on an anonymous leaderboard.

The app also provides users with several benefits during and after the reading project. These can be grouped into Society’s Benefits, Educational Benefits, the Benefit of Personal Development and the Benefit of Motivation. Initially, young convicts will benefit from an increased motivation that could lead them to change their behavior, develop competencies, set long term goals and that could boost their engagement. This could then have a positive effect on their mood status and self-esteem. While using the app, young people playfully learn about topics through quizzes, podcasts and other challenging tasks, which in turn contributes to social stability and personal development goals. The ultimate goal is to hep them find their own path, leading away from jail. Besides that, the reading project also provides emotional and practical support.

Innovation in Action

The KonTEXT solution, named "ReadUp", is a mobile application, which runs in any web-browser environment (developed and tested in Google Chrome Version 87.0.4280.88 or above). The "ReadUp" application uses the following AWS services:

• Amazon RDS
• Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• Amazon Cloudfront
• AWS Amplify
• Amazon Cognito

The backend consists of two main parts: the database and the backend software. For the database, the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is used, where an instance of a MySQL database is running. As a backend software, Java Spring Boot runs in the Elastic Beanstalk. This Elastic Beanstalk is in turn wrapped inside the CloudFront service to obfuscate its URL and to secure it with HTTPS URL. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is used to enable the traffic between the database and the backend. By default, any traffic from outside domains is blocked.

Regarding the frontend, the AWS Amplify service is used to host a React web app. The app in turn uses Amazon Cognito service for authentication. Cognito is configured to work with the Amazon instance and with the localhost development environment. The main features that were developed are landing page, registration and login, profile page, book selection and reading progress tracking, personal statistics, leaderboard, reading plan and the selection of themes to form a bridge between the actually developed application and the gamification concept.

Besides the already developed features of the solution, the project team came up with two more ideas connected to gamification. The goal of these concepts was to motivate users to learn with the help of gamified elements. The first concept contains a personal avatar, that can be boosted up with accessories if the user makes progress, and the second contains a series of mini games that aim to make learning and completing tasks easier and more fun.

Next Steps

Since the development and documentation from the side of the project team is done, all the produced materials will be provided to the client. In addition, the project team recommends taking the following steps for future progress.

First, KonTEXT should invite a couple of young people to try the recommended solution. As the application is available via a public link, anyone can register and use it. This would be the first touchpoint of real users with the app, who could then provide valuable feedback and answer questions like “Which features do you like?”, “Which features aren’t understandable?”, “What else could support your progress?”. For a more seamless usage, the database of the application, including the books, might need to be updated.

Secondly, KonTEXT should continue the development of the application. As our solution prototype is already a working software, there is no need to set up a new environment and a new architecture. New versions could be released and the app could be deployed to the users gradually.

Thirdly, KonTEXT should evaluate the gamification concepts that the project team suggested. In case of a favorable decision, these should be incorporated into the designs and the according user stories should be created on the product backlog.