We conducted our soft opening at the Global Language and Culture Room this week. During our soft opening, several faculty came by and participated in our experience. A lot of faculty had feedback about the state of our experience with the time remaining left in the semester. Moreover, there was a large discussion between the faculty, client, and team about the direction of this project heading into the final week of the semester.
From that discussion, the team has decided to make a pivot in our final deliverable. This pivot includes two major changes:
- The virtual reality component of our experience is being removed. Faculty found that the communication between guests during the experience was not actually about the Amazon or environmental challenges. Instead, the guests were primarily discussing the gameplay mechanics of the experience. Thus, we are moving forward with putting the “boat view” on one of the walls in the immersion room. With this change, we can still have a cooperative experience, but the loss of asymmetry should help foster more conversation about the Amazon.
- The story in its current state is not making enough of an impact on the experience. Rather than write a new story, we are creating a system that gives our client and students the power to change the content within the experience. This will open up the possibilities of how the experience is used in the Global Language and Culture Room.
With these major changes, there are a plethora of subsequent changes that need to be made. In order to make all of these changes, we have restructured roles accordingly to ensure we have a some team members finishing the build and other members completing production materials for the end of the semester. Other than that, we are on track to have the experience ready and installed in the Global Language and Culture Room by the end of the semester.