Background:

Unitas™ designs, manages and funds innovative national programmes for young people at risk of social exclusion. These programmes are implemented in schools, further education colleges and youth offending teams.

The Unitas™ Text Now® initiative is not just about improving reading but also about learning how to choose text, understanding the meaning of text and learning how to enjoy text.

In the interest of supporting this vision, Unitas™ commissioned Travis to entirely rework the existing platform My Choice™ into becoming a truly inspiring reading hub with additional functionality, fun features and supportive tools.

The Challenge:

For young people with literacy issues, reading is not a pleasure.
Using their imagination to visualise stories whilst reading does not come naturally.
Lacking a selection strategy to choose text of interest prevents them from exploring reading material.
Following stories in films, TV and through computer games are every day experiences.
The written word can be a shameful reminder of their weaknesses.
Books are not just about words ~ they are about stories too!

The Solution:

Magazine and book covers draw you in and persuade you to start that journey of discovery, page-by-page, cover-to-cover. Visual and verbal clues on a cover help us to identify if a particular book is likely to be of interest.

Tools were devised to help young people develop skills and confidence around understanding the meaning of stories through visual and verbal clues.

An interactive creative portal titled ‘Cover-To-Cover’ was created to inspire and motivate young people to get into stories. Users of the application are awarded credits enabling them to purchase books through the My Choice™ website. Through this and other initiatives we are able to engage and inspire young people to connect images to stories.

The Benefits:

Encouraging the sharing of work and generation of a friendly, yet competitive social environment amongst peers.
Creation of an extensive library with a range of images to appeal to young people of 12 and upwards.
The provision of prompts and verbal clues to guide the user, while retaining an intuitive interface that is self explanatory and easy to use unassisted.
Offering users an amazing opportunity to immerse themselves in the creative world of cover design.
An ability to share, compare and rate designs within the C2C creative community for a chance to win fantastic prizes and earn credits toward seriously cool stuff!
Users benefit from exclusive innovative tools geared toward harnessing their inner capacity to visualise stories and stimulate further interest.

The overall success of this appointment led to other key enhancements across the YAA scheme (Youth-Arts-Awards) and other directives driven by Unitas™, such as MyChoice Books.

Commissioned by:

Professor Martin Stephenson
CEO

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