New game designed to fight loneliness in trans and gender diverse people

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New game designed to fight loneliness in trans and gender diverse people

GenderQuest, a game for young Australian trans and gender diverse people, was designed by RMIT students in partnership with industry partners Medibank and The Australian Red Cross.

Responding to a brief that required them to address the issue of loneliness, final year Bachelor of Business students created the game to connect trans people with lived experience and those new to exploring their gender through games to build community, friendships and the transfer of knowledge.

As part of a College of Business and Law Work Integrated Learning (WIL) course, over 750 students worked with industry to produce a range of commercially viable product prototypes.

At an end of year showcase in November, students presented their prototypes to industry partners including Medibank, The Australian Red Cross, ASL, IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Violet Minehan, part of the team behind GenderQuest, said having industry involved in the project helped make the prototype more commercially viable.

students on stage

(L-R) Students Laura Peluso and Violet Minehan present GenderQuest to industry at the College of Business and Law end of year showcase.

“GenderQuest needed to be an affordable, light-weight solution that could be easily integrated into the outreach programs of our partners: Medibank and The Australian Red Cross,” she said.

Susan Cullen, industry representative for Medibank, was impressed by the range of student ideas.

“We came up with this problem around loneliness which isn’t something students probably thought about when coming in to do a business course, so the way they approached a social problem from a business perspective was really impressive,” she said.

“[GenderQuest] was looking at gamification, and we had another project looking at using green spaces to combat loneliness as well.”

Georgia Smith from AWS lauded the GenderQuest team’s attention to detail.

“I was so impressed with the level of research and knowledge they had about their specific customer segment,” she said.

For Violet, GenderQuest gave her the opportunity to work closely with the trans and gender diverse community.

We spent many hours conducting interviews and surveys amongst online Australian transgender communities to understand how we could best help them.

“I was thrilled to work intimately with a community of people, to understand their struggles and to meaningfully contribute to solving a real pain in their lives.

“As a transgender woman with a decade of lived experience, the Australian transgender community greatly supported me when I was exploring my identity.

“GenderQuest was my opportunity to give back to that community and share my knowledge and experiences with the next generation of young trans and gender diverse Australians.”

Well done to the team behind GenderQuest: Violet Minehan, Laura Peluso and Caitlin McCabe

Learn more about the Bachelor of Business at RMIT here.

29 November 2022

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