INDUSTRY:
Public Sector
CLIENT:
Corrective Services NSW (CSNSW)
YEAR:
2025
ROLE:
Strategic Designer
About.
Corrective Services NSW (CSNSW) delivers programs to reduce reoffending, support reintegration and build safer communities.
Success Ladder is a SCORM-packaged Learning Management System, which is available to learners through an application on the Offender Tablets, and to staff users on CSNSW PC and laptops only.
This project explores innovative strategies for prisoner rehabilitation using digital technologies.
Challenge.
For Success Ladder, CSNSW faces challenges common to many correctional centres:
Low engagement
Limited motivation for learning
A need for meaningful, rehabilitative learning
Strategy.
This strategy introduces an innovative intervention: integrating the serious game Saving the Tree into the Success Ladder LMS. It transforms the platform from a static repository into an immersive, narrative-driven experience. By turning educational modules into quests, the approach aims to increase intrinsic motivation, build pro-social skills, and improve participation. Ultimately supporting rehabilitation and reducing recidivism.
In this narrative, inmates work to grow a virtual tree, symbolising healing and renewal. The first stage focuses on adjusting to correctional life and emotional balance, where learners choose a seed and plant their first tree.
During ongoing learning, real-life tasks like teamwork activities, vocational training, and therapy. Provide “nutrition” that helps the tree grow. As the tree develops, it bears fruit representing rewards such as extra family calls or access to books.
In the final six months before release, challenges shift toward financial literacy and personal development. Upon completing the program, CSNSW will plant a real tree to symbolise growth and the possibility of change.
Action plan.
The strategy unfolds across three phases: building the gamified LMS foundation, launching the immersive serious game, and integrating the system into a long-term smart prison ecosystem. Informed by user personas, behavioural insights, and global case studies, the approach strengthens emotional resilience, vocational capability, and reintegration readiness.
By reframing the LMS as a serious game, CSNSW can achieve lower recidivism, higher LMS engagement, and improved employment outcomes after release.
A complementary board game is also designed for pilot testing.
