Guiding Yukon youth through secondary school with an interactive, story-driven digital experience

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Two mobile screens displaying scenes from the Grad Planner app, showing illustrated Yukon youth characters in a forest setting as part of an interactive storytelling experience.

Overview

The Yukon First Nations Education Directorate (YFNED) works to ensure unified control over First Nation education, empowering communities through Indigenous ways of knowing while preparing youth to participate confidently in the world around them. To support this mission, YFNED set out to reimagine how Yukon high school students engage with graduation planning through a web-based app that combines storytelling and practical guidance. The Grad Planner takes students on a choose-your-own-adventure journey following two Yukon youth as they navigate secondary school and explore the many pathways available to them, while also providing an easy-to-use, digitized version of the Grad Planner resource for students, teachers, school counsellors, and First Nations education staff.

Concept sketches of Yukon youth characters exploring clothing, poses, and expressions during early development of the Grad Planner app.

Challenge

YFNED’s existing Grad Planner was available as a printed resource and PDF, but student uptake was low. While the information was thorough, the format did not reflect how youth prefer to engage with content, making it difficult to spark interest or encourage proactive graduation planning. As a new initiative, the project needed to feel engaging and relevant to Yukon students, respect the diversity of First Nations cultures across the territory, and be delivered within a modest budget despite a large and ambitious vision.

Illustrated character turnaround showing a Yukon youth from multiple angles, created for the Grad Planner app to support character animation and interactive storytelling.

Solution

MBDC partnered with YFNED to create an interactive digital experience that feels exploratory rather than instructional. We designed a choose-your-own-adventure video experience that uses JavaScript to control the playhead, allowing students to make decisions that shape the story as it unfolds. The experience combines character animation with a custom 3D environment built in Blender, creating an immersive visual world that draws students into the narrative. Interactive pop-ups provide additional context and information at key moments, while a fully digitized version of the Grad Planner content offers a practical reference tool alongside the story. Cultural respect was central to the project, with First Nations artists engaged for illustration and voiceover to ensure the experience authentically reflects Yukon youth and communities.

Illustrated scene showing two Yukon youth standing on a forest path, with the environment transitioning from a monochrome render on one side to a full-colour landscape on the other.

Composite image showing multiple mobile screens from the Grad Planner app, including illustrated storytelling scenes, reflective text prompts, and informational panels that support students navigating secondary school pathways.