Emberex: PACE, Pregaming Awareness Application
Pace header items

Product
Responsive web app to provide college students with a research based strategy to manage their pregame drinking.

Project roles
Web App Development
UI/UX Design
Data Visualization
Illustration

Quality Assurance

THE CHALLENGE
The research teams at RAND Corporation and the University of Southern California received a grant to evaluate their intervention related to college students and pregame drinking. They wanted to turn their ideas into an app that was thoughtful and engaging to provide the students with strategies to stay safe when drinking with friends.

Phone

ILLUSTRATION
Part of understanding BAC (blood alcohol content) is knowing what “one drink” really means. Just how does a mixed drink stack up against a pint of beer? We used illustrations of different types of drinks to help reinforce this type of information.

We created alcohol-related icons as a signal to users that they had completed a section and were moving on to the next. These icons were also used in the menu as another visual queue to help them find information they might want to revisit at another time.

bear badge icons
Solo Cup

THE PROCESS
We started the project with a well-defined storyboard from the client that clearly outlined all of the content. After that, it was up to us to come up with creative ways to present the information, engage the users, and collect all necessary data. After reviewing wireframes and deciding on an overall approach, the client was able to schedule photoshoots and create videos to align with the vision.

THE RESULTS
We created PACE (Pregaming Awareness in College Environments), an interactive and engaging application with several activities that allow students to use sliders to answer questions within certain parameters. These answers are presented alongside comparative data from other students, which illustrates how the user's own drinking really compares. We give students an interactive way to see what BAC looks like, based on their weight, gender, and how many drinks they’ve had, which helps them determine their pregaming goals as well as a strategy to meet them safely.

To reduce cost, usage data and other analytics were provided in CSV format for offline analysis using the client’s current tools.

Technology
Node, React, PostgreSQL