Cool Moms Dance Too Founder Quyionah Wingfield and her daughter Serenity discovered a way to encourage healthy communication amongst families through gaming.
This game known as Gen Connect is in a category of its own by bridging the gap amongst generations.
“The purpose behind it is kind of understanding that through conversations, we can have the right types of conversations and we can connect generations,” Wingfield said.
Serenity, Wingfield’s eight year-old daughter, believed it helped her communicate with her mother on a deeper level.
“We get closer when I learn things about her after she answers the question,” Serenity said.
This game is offered in Apps across mobile devices due to the partnership Wingfield created with The Center for Civic Innovation, Georgia Tech, and Carleton College Hack 4 Impact.
“We just started going through the process of continuing to develop the game and Serenity did a lot with the design and the user experience process. It continuously evolved over the last year into and now we are in the app store,” Wingfield said.
Serenity and her mother are not finished with the plans they have for Gen Connect as they want to reach as many families as possible to provide stronger bonds across the world.
“We have a really awesome goal to get the app in 22,000 families hands by the end of spring 2022,” they said.
The Connection Gen app has many partnerships in the works both locally and nationally. Wingfield told the Atlanta Voice she has plans to host a game night at the Gathering Spot within the next few months.
“A lot of the partners that we’re looking at are local, hyperlocal, as well as national. We actually just made contact with a previous partner from ‘Cool Mom’s Dance Too’, our dance program in Ghana, to start doing game nights with a few organizations and connected schools in Ghana,”Wingfield said.
Wingfield emphasized the purpose of the game is to open up a clear line of communication for all that decide to play. She explains how it has helped her as a mother after working on a Parent Guide with students from Emory University during her development process.
“The Parent Guide basically takes all the questions in the game and provides interpretations,” Wingfield elaborated.
The Gen Connect App plans to partner with mental health organizations such as Mental Health America Georgia and NAMI Georgia.
“It’s not a game that’s going to have folks crying. It’s fun. We have a dance challenge.We have different things that make it fun. It allows you to think a little deeper about how you feel about certain things and I think that’s meaningful,” Wingfield said.
