Work Safely as Dudka Agency Solves Urgent Problems

According to US government estimates, about 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked abroad for exploitation every year. According to the estimates of the Representative Office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Ukraine, more than 160,000 Ukrainians have suffered from human trafficking during the history of independence. Young people under 35 are at risk. More than 80% of the victims have higher or technical education.

With the assistance of the Ministry of Social Policy, the IOM Representative Office in Ukraine – the UN Migration Agency – developed an interactive educational quest on safe employment and combating human trafficking. Our studio — Dudka.Agency — was responsible for developing the quest on a tender basis. Actually, this is where the story of the project begins.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

In autumn 2019, the art director of the studio, Ivan Dudka, won a redesign tender from the International Organization for Migration in Ukraine (IOM). Together with this project, the studio learned how to work with Drupal in a short period of time, created a site based on a new CMS for the team and gained a good reputation.

Thanks to the successful experience of cooperation, IOM turned to us again. More precisely, they offered to participate in the tender for the creation of the “Travel Safely” quest. “I only now understand that the name of the quest was not very expressive and clear at the time, but we understood the goal well enough — to create a tool for employment centers and other employment institutions to practice the necessary skills,” says project manager Kira Kamarali.

The request from IOM was to provide remote training to field staff so that they could convey this information to potential users and, most importantly, collect feedback. The task is not trivial at all. So we set to work.

Dudka.Agecy — місце де народжуються ідеї

“When opportunities for official employment abroad decrease, criminals take advantage of the situation,” says Anh Nguyen, Head of the IOM Representative Office in Ukraine. “We are already seeing an increase in the sale of fake invitations from employers, as well as other types of fraud. We must act immediately to raise public awareness and protect Ukrainians from risky behavior,” added the Head of the IOM Representation in Ukraine.

The online quest format was primarily chosen because people spend more and more time online during the quarantine period. In addition, the IOM noted that since 2020, there has been an increase in the number of employment fraud through the Internet.

The idea of the quest and the script originated with Ivan Dudka. “He always sees very precisely how to reveal the needs of the client – both those who know what they want, and those who think they know, and especially those who have no idea what they might want,” says Kira Camarali.

In this case, IOM had a rather vague idea. Dudka.Agency enlisted the support of Iryna Dzhigurda-Mironova and created a unique and interesting concept.

The script is worthy of Spielberg

The quest developed by our studio is aimed at developing critical thinking in real life. During the game, users must learn to recognize risky offers that disguise human trafficking. During the quest, safe employment skills are practiced.

Within 30 minutes, a person is immersed in virtual reality, where it is necessary to make “fateful” decisions. Accordingly, the results and situations in which the user may find themselves change. Each choice affects the further development of events.

It all starts with the fact that the user has to fill out a short resume, where he indicates his gender, age and level of education. After that, the path of finding a job, preparing documents, traveling abroad and getting to know the employer begins. When the journey ends with successful employment, the user can analyze what mistakes he made and get acquainted with the rules of safe employment.

Iryna Dzhigurda-Mironova was responsible for the script and plot twists. The path from the first screen to receiving a certificate is entirely her idea. Iryna developed scenarios for 4 age and 2 gender branches with ramifications for different outcomes that depended entirely on the user’s choice. The great work of our studio’s specialists is hidden behind beautiful characters, picturesque landscapes and twisted dialogues. So it’s time to figure out what the quest looks like from the side of development and design.

Teamwork

“It was fun,” is how project manager Kira Camarali describes the work on the quest.

The deadlines for the work were limited. There were certain difficulties that the project manager had to deal with. The established scope of work changed in connection with numerous requests from the client, and the possibilities for maneuvers were limited by the tender requirements. Certain bureaucratic norms of communication with the intergovernmental organization also added to the difficulties. It is worth noting that this is a socially important project, which brings driving changes not only for Ukrainians, but also for the whole world, so the studio simply had no right to be late with the release. Kira Kamarali, as a manager, was responsible for the successful launch of a full-fledged product on time. Difficult bureaucratic communication with the client and a wave of requests regarding the quest were compensated by established communication with the team and the main principle of our specialists “it concerns me”. The quest was launched on the eve of October 18, the European Day against Human Trafficking.

The quest also became a challenge for our designers. First, we prepared an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) instead of a banal presentation. In this way, we fully and in all aspects showed IOM what our future quest will represent. For this, studio designer Anna Holovachuk programmed part of the layouts directly in Figma. “In the beginning, it seemed impossible, but Anya was able to surprise everyone,” says Kira Camarali.

To prepare layouts for development, the designers of the studio completely immersed themselves in game development. A set of characters was created, which were changed, accessories, documents, water bottles were added to them, and their body, arms and legs were moved. The designers also developed a bunch of different backgrounds for different situations and plot twists. All this was done in order for the user to immerse himself in the fictional world during the quest, which will prepare him for challenges in real life.

“It is quite important that before this project our designers were only engaged in design, they were not illustrators. Therefore, the team had to go through a crash course in game art and game logic,” says the project manager.

The development team also faced some challenges. At that time, the studio worked only on websites. They have a completely different logic, process architecture and workflow, which is not related to the continuity of process implementation. This project became a certain challenge and a point of growth for the development team, which expanded their capabilities. The main technical requirement was the development of a Drupal-based quest. Unfortunately, with the logic and gamification we implemented, it was practically impossible. But for our team there is no word “impossible”. The developers made a compromise. The base of the quest was developed on Drupal, as requested by the customer, but expanded its capabilities with the help of Vue. It was difficult, but the team managed.

It is also worth talking about the difficulties that our STO Sergey Torkhov managed to overcome. Our team wanted to provide IOM with the most detailed statistics capturing all gaming behavior through GA (Google Analytics). From the data collection side, recording of the user’s steps during the quest was implemented and fraud protection was developed. IOM also has the ability to keep records of certificates, and the data of all participants is protected from leakage. Thanks to the work of STO, everyone won – IOM has detailed statistics, and information about users is safe.

Quest in numbers

The quest was launched on October 16, 2020 and is available on the website of the International Organization for Migration until today. More than 112,000 people have passed through it for the entire time. The geography is also impressive, because people from 81 countries of the world completed the quest and received their certificates. 43% percent of users are 18-24 year olds, the most vulnerable audience to human trafficking. About 23% of people return to repeat the quest.

“I think that the trend of educational games is a relevant thing, given the pandemic and the total trend of gamification of everything, starting from the process of drinking a daily amount of water, ending with a trip to the dentist,” says Kira Camarali.

We help change the world

This project has great social value. From the very beginning, it aimed to teach people to pay attention to dangerous things when working abroad. In conditions when the people are cornered by the need to go to work in another country, a game-based educational solution is something that effectively teaches to pay attention to important moments.

Our studio accepted the challenge, despite the fact that the process was difficult, and completed the task. The quest is active, thousands of people use it every month. We can confidently assume that the project, developed with the support of IOM in Ukraine and financed by the Government of Japan, carries a high social benefit for the population not only of Ukraine, but also of the world.

The world should know its heroes

A large team of various specialists worked on the project. Implementation of such a case in a short period of time required maximum efforts and professionalism from everyone at Dudka.Agency.

Project Manager — Kira Camarali

Lead Designer — Anna Holovachuk

Designer — Maryna Vengrenyuk

Designer — Artur Martakov

Lead Developer — Serhii Torkhov

Developer — Sasha Golovko

Developer — Vova Kuzenkov

Developer — Andrey Tyshchenko

Lead QA — Yura Kazmiruk

QA — Nikita Makhovskyi

If you still don’t know about all the difficulties that can arise when working abroad, then it’s time to go through the quest developed by our studio — https://quest.stoptrafficking.org/start.