Issue Date:  -  Tuesday, 15 August 2006

 Flashes of excellence in consumer protection education Multimedia project

A bull, a spaceship and a haunted house will be used to help educate young consumers about their rights and responsibilities.

Students from Curtin University of Technology’s Multimedia Design course developed interactive computer animated stories to help young consumers aged 18 to 24 explore consumer protection issues.

The students used Macromedia Flash software to create interactive scenarios on shopping rights, tenancy and buying a car. Flash is a useful software package used to create interactive stories with different responses and scenarios.

The Flash multimedia animations will be hosted on the new young consumers’ webpage being developed by Consumer Protection.

Five students today received a $500 prize each for their innovative multimedia projects. The students are Elise Martinson, Kristy Davis, Desmond Lau, Ronald Lam and Joey Hamidon.

“These students have come up with some very creative and very funny scenarios to help explain consumer protection issues to young people,” Consumer Protection Commissioner Patrick Walker said.

“One story, complete with country music and singing chipmunks, is about a farmer who purchased a breeding bull only to find it did not perform. The farmer got a refund because the item (the bull) was not fit for its intended purpose,” Mr Walker said. “Another story uses a haunted house to explain the importance of filling in a property condition report when renting a house.”

Mr Walker said Consumer Protection approached the Head of Curtin’s Multimedia Design course to develop the project last year. About 30 concepts were submitted with five chosen to be developed into projects.

“Many young people are not aware of their rights and responsibilities as consumers, yet are reluctant to read traditional government publications,” Mr Walker said.

“The idea behind this project was to tap into the popularity of computer games and use interactive role play to appeal to the “Internet Generation.”
   
“At the same time, the project gave students valuable experience in working towards and meeting a real client brief.”