Smart Home Challenge

An engaging, story-driven game adventure provides players with essential skills for data protection, secure data sharing, and managing personal information

Initial Situation/Problem statement

This initiative originated within the framework of the Erasmus+ project DataPro, which seeks to enhance digital sovereignty among young learners through engaging, game-based education. While established resources address basic data protection compliance, DataPro recognized a critical deficiency in covering the full scope of modern digital challenges. Existing materials fail to comprehensively address topics such as ethical data use, privacy-by-design, emerging technologies (like Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things), and the nuances of cross-border data transfers. This educational shortfall is compounded by a common student misconception that their data is already compromised, which subsequently inhibits their motivation to adopt secure digital habits.

Project Goal

The primary goal of our project is to create and deliver an educational web application — an interactive digital challenge that teaches players aged 14–16 to understand and apply secure data habits related to data protection, personal information safety, and responsible data sharing.

Our 2D educational adventure game, developed for Datapro Education, introduces students to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union’s core framework for ensuring privacy and responsible data handling, by showing the trade-offs between security and comfort in smart-home environments.

The story begins with a player preparing for a movie night, only for the smart home to malfunction: devices misbehave, lights flicker, and system settings disappear. To regain control, the player must explore the house, interact with smart devices, and configure them correctly.

Inspired by classic Pokémon-style gameplay, the game allows free movement through various rooms, each containing devices with configuration options or mini-games that teach GDPR principles such as data minimization, consent, privacy-by-design, and secure handling of personal information. Every decision affects two key metrics — security, which reflects how protected their data and systems are, and comfort, which represents convenience and automation. Students learn that increased comfort often reduces security, while stronger security may require small sacrifices in convenience. By the end, after successfully configuring all devices, the player restores control over the home and can finally enjoy their movie night while understanding the importance of secure configurations and GDPR-compliant decision making.

Developed Solution and its benefit

The game transforms abstract GDPR concepts into interactive situations. Instead of reading rules, students experience how data misuse, poor configurations or over-permissive device settings can create vulnerabilities.

Key benefits include:

• a fun, narrative-driven experience that naturally teaches data protection principles
• interactive device configuration tasks that display real GDPR concepts
• a dynamic security vs. comfort system showing how every choice affects risk
• multiple smart devices, each offering a unique GDPR related minigame
• increased awareness of privacy settings, data usage, and consent
• a safe environment to experiment with configurations and learn from mistakes
• progression-based learning as students “fix” one device at a time

The result is an engaging and memorable tool that helps students understand how important security, data protection, and GDPR compliance are in everyday life.

Testimonial
«Teachers often face a privacy paradox in data-protection education: digital natives recognise online risks but often choose convenience over protective action. To address this gap, the DataPro project and IP students designed and implemented the Smart Home Challenge – a game that makes IoT-related data-protection practices tangible and accessible for school students. We are very happy to have been part of co-developing a fun alternative to 'chalk and talk'! Working and communicating across disciplines of education and programming was an enriching experience that taught us valuable lessons in both game and UX design. The feedback we received from students and teachers alike after prototype-testing in the classroom confirmed the game to be an innovative, educational and above all fun method to learn about many privacy practices in a short time. DataPro is now integrating the game into its syllabi for schools, and is eager to recommend the Smart Home Challenge to teachers in Europe.»
Deborah Krzyzowski

Key terms

• Programming languagesTypescript
• Frontend StackReact.js with Pixi.js
• Deployment PlatformDocker, Gitlab
• TranslationLinguiJS
• ExtrasTailwindCSS, Lucide-React, React-Router

Customer

DataPro - Project
Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg
Kunzenweg 21
79117 Freiburg
https://www.datapro.education/

Team