Build Your Best Day
- Brand
- Canada
- Year
- 2017
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Zulu Alpha Kilo
- With
- Jam3
Objective
In 2016 Canada released the world's first 24-hour movement guidelines for kids and teens aged 5–17, but the document itself was never going to reach the kids it was written for — at the time, only 9% of Canadian children were active enough, just 24% stayed within the recommended two hours of screen time, and 31% of students were sleep-deprived. ParticipACTION, working with the Public Health Agency of Canada, needed to turn those guidelines into something children would choose to play with on their own, with no paid media to drive them there at launch.
Solution
At buildyourbestday.com, the player builds a kid's entire day one activity at a time, choosing from 180 options that range from everyday (dancing, helping around the house) to pure fantasy (playing hockey with a pro, swimming with a mermaid, climbing a beanstalk). Every pick drops into one of four buckets — Sweat, Step, Sit or Sleep — and the day fills in section by section, with icons, color and sound rewarding each choice the way a video game would. As the day takes shape, the game checks it against Canada's movement guidelines in real time, flagging if screen time is creeping too high or sleep is coming up short. Once the day is complete, the player can go back and rebalance any part of it, then print out a summary of the day they built.
Results
At soft launch — with no paid media support until January 2018 — the game was already holding an average session length of 3 minutes.
- 1
The player arrives at buildyourbestday.com and is invited to build an ideal day, taking charge of how that day unfolds.
- 2
The game introduces four category labels that frame everything that follows: Sweat for vigorous activity, Step for light movement (especially outdoors), Sit for sedentary and screen time, and Sleep.
- 3
Players fill in one part of the day at a time rather than assembling the whole day at once, choosing activities for each part from a shared library of 180 options that range from everyday tasks like playing, dancing, or helping around the house to fantastical ones like playing hockey with a pro, swimming with a mermaid, or climbing a beanstalk.
- 4
Each choice adds to a visible progress toward a full day, reinforced with color, motion, icons, sound, and video-game-style level-up feedback.
- 5
Certain choices trigger tips and short explanations, such as why putting screen-based activities right before bed isn't a good idea.
- 6
The game checks the assembled day against Canada's 24-hour movement guidelines in real time, flagging whether it has enough activity and sleep or too much screen time and sitting.
- 7
At the end, players see whether their day meets the guidelines and can go back and swap choices until it does.
- 8
The finished day can be printed out as a keepsake of the achievement.
