· 4 min read
I've been developing BeeHive, also known as The Hive, for Factory International's learning hub. It's a browser-based activity that helps learners explore how the skills they already use might connect with work in the creative industries.
The journey starts with a bee. You give it a made-up name, choose its appearance and answer a short quiz about how you approach different situations. Your answers build a creative profile, add details to your bee and give it a place in a shared Creative Hive.
Build your bee
Before the questions begin, you can choose your bee's colour, stripes, wings, skin and starting accessory. A retro television previews each change, and a random option gives you another starting point if you'd prefer to experiment.
That personalisation carries through the activity. As you answer questions, your bee reacts and earns creative accessories. Three answers associated with the same creative area unlock a matching prop, such as a laptop for digital technology or a clapperboard for film and television.
The bee gives learners something they can recognise as their own when they reach the shared Hive.
Discover your transferable skills
The quiz has 15 questions about the contributions you enjoy making, the problems you like solving and the way you work with other people. There are no right or wrong answers.
The current activity connects those choices with seven creative areas:
- Film & TV Production
- Events & Live
- Marketing, Content & Communications
- Art & Design
- Music
- Theatre & Performance
- Digital & Creative Technology
At the end, the result identifies the creative area that appears most often in your answers. It pairs that area with three transferable skills and lets you expand the result to see supporting examples from your choices.
For example, the Digital & Creative Technology profile highlights digital curiosity, problem-solving and research. Events & Live draws attention to planning, collaboration and adaptability.
The result is a starting point for exploring creative work. It gives learners language for strengths they may already use in everyday life, study or other jobs.
Join the Creative Hive
Once you've seen your result, you choose whether to join the Creative Hive. The site submits your bee when you press the join button.
Bees gather in areas that match their creative profiles. A separate Hive TV view turns the collection into a display that can run on a larger screen, so a group can see their individual bees together. Replaying on the same device updates the existing bee.
Learners can play without creating an account. The activity asks for invented bee names, checks those names before publication and keeps the Hive separate from learners' Moodle identities.
Built for a learning environment
BeeHive runs in the browser with a plain JavaScript interface, a Node backend and Supabase storage. The visual design uses a pastel honeycomb background, Factory International's branding and the television that frames the learner's bee.
Motion can be paused, reduced-motion preferences are supported, and the background music has a mute control that remembers your choice.
The project also includes a SCORM 1.2 package for Moodle and Totara. That package launches the hosted activity and reports learning-session progress and completion. The career quiz records choices without treating a learner's creative profile as a pass-or-fail score.
Interface wording can be maintained through a connected Google Sheet. Question structure and scoring changes go through a separate validation and deployment process.
Where the project stands
As of 17 October 2026, the current demo is available, and the SCORM package has been prepared for handoff. Deployment into the final learning hub and acceptance checks in the client's course remain ahead.
You can try the BeeHive demo to build a bee and explore your creative profile.