June 15, 2022
History Adventures’ Global Pandemics is a free app that transports users back in time and into the lives, choices, and dilemmas faced by individuals around the globe during some of the largest-scale plagues and pandemics in history. To Do No Harm: Plague of Athens is the first of several interactive, digital adventures being released over the next six to ten months by a design team at Northwestern University in Qatar.
To Do No Harm tells the story of Nikos of Athens, a physician during the Athenian plague. Nikos struggles to treat the multitude of people sickened during this world-upending ordeal. The story unfolds in a choice-based narrative design that includes 3D motion and web animation, vocabulary support, simulated pathogens, immersive 360-degree panoramas of historical locations, animated historical timelines and maps, interactive historical documents, and media-rich adaptive assessments. The experience is cross-curricular, interactive, and immersive.
The Global Pandemics app will work on any device that can use a Chrome browser. It is free and includes no in-app purchases or hidden costs. Several more pandemic experiences and characters are on the way.