Game of girls

Making mathematical algorithms approachable for a young audience. Reintroducing Conway's Game of Life in a style accessible for teenage girls.

Coding for the Girls

This was a side project of mine. It started with my fascination for Conway's Game of life, and how unappealing and uninitiative some simulations online were. I wanted to recreate it in a way that would inspire my twelve-year-old self.

Screenshot Game of Girls on the right is a big canvas of dots. On the left is play button, step button, clear button and speed slider. There are stamp buttons of patterns. and explanation of the rules of conwats game of life.

Don’t start with random clicking

When I learned of Conway’s game of life, I just clicked randomly to create some dots and tried to understand what happened after pressing play. Only a single dot doesn’t do much in the game. There are some patterns that show the interesting forms and loops you can create in the algorithm; why not start there? Hell, why don’t we do a hamster stamp for fun?

Take away

Play first, let them discover, and explain later.

Explain how simple an algorithm can be

For kids the web seems like a mystical place; to demystify coding, we need to start small and show cool stuff. Not just ‘hello world’, but show the world of possibilities you can create with just three if statements.

Try The Game of Girls yourself!
Image of girl of 8 years old for a computer showing a pastel screen of square dots with on the left text, play buttons, stamps and paragraph of text.

Key design decisions

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Other work