Week 2 – The Game Portal

A lot of great progress has been made this week, and we are excited to share with you!

Establishing Communication with Our Client

We started the week by meeting with our amazing clients, Ian Cole and Adam Hoffman from Give Kids The World, who provided us with a lot of helpful information about vision for the project.

We are tasked with developing an experience for Mayor Clayton’s WonderLab, a newly designed attraction at Give Kids The World Village and the namesake of our team. Although the attraction is currently under construction (the old Hall of Heroes exhibition is presently being renovated into Mayor Clayton’s WonderLab), it’s envisioned to be a place where wish kids an their families can explore and learn in a fun and interactive, makerspace-like environment. It will feature hands-on technology and tools to inspire a lifetime of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) enthusiasm and education.

Mayer Clayton’s WonderLab

Within the WonderLab, we were provided with two options to further develop: the Brilliance Bottler and the Game Portal.

The Brilliance Bottler is a physical representation of the Wonder, Imagination, and Possibility present within the Wonderlab. The physical device is envisioned as a control panel with working switches, knobs, levers, wiring, patch panels, and displays of various types. Our task would be to bring the Brilliance Bottler to life by completing the interaction design – developing activities which incorporate the physical devices, displays, lights, and sounds present on the Bottler.

The Game Portal is a circular room with projection-mapped walls and spatial sound. It’s envisioned as an interactive environment where kids can enjoy a uniquely immersive gaming experience and take away a little nugget of knowledge in the process. Our task would be to specify a technical platform for the room and build a proof-of-concept activity to be installed in the space. A stretch goal would be having the platform designed such that future developers could build upon our framework to implement new technology or introduce new content to the room.

Starting Our Ideation

With the understanding that our team’s strengths are more on the digital side, and the Brilliance Bottler doesn’t provide much freedom to explore the digital visual space, we have decided to develop an experience for the Game Portal.

We started our ideation process by defining our design constraints and principles:

  • The experience should be fun and educational
  • The experience should target children from 4 – 18
  • The experience should be able to host multiple guests simultaneously
  • The experience should be as accessible as possible

These guidelines have helped us define our overall objective – to design something enjoyable for families to do together. For the next step, instead of coming up with specific concrete ideas, we decided to loosely define three vastly different directions and pitch these different ideas to our client and get preference before moving forward.

The first idea is a ride-like experience that challenges kids to pilot a vehicle through obstacles. The second idea is a puzzle room experience that challenges kids to work together and find clues in the environment. The third idea is an interactive exploration experience that teaches kids knowledge by immersing them in a scalable world.

One big challenge we are facing is the prospect of developing and playtesting a full experience without having access to the actual room. According to the interior design document from our client, the diameter of the circular room is 15 feet, 7 inches, so to physically build a replica of the room would be very challenging. Our solution therefore, is to simulate the room as a virtual environment and conduct our playtests in VR. We also included this approach to playtesting in our pitch to Ian and Adam.

Client Response

After putting together our pitch deck, we met with our client on Friday to pitch all three ideas and potential experimentations. Our meeting was very helpful, and we gained some important feedback:

  • The ride experience may not be ideal, as GKTW is located in Orlando where the bar for ride-like experiences is very high
  • The puzzle room experience is their favorite prospect because it has potential to be fun and educational at the same time
  • The interactive exploration experience is what they originally pictured for the space, but they believe a puzzle-room experience has the potential to be more engaging
  • They love the idea of having a VR platform because it not only helps us playtest but also has the potential to be passed on to future teams as a development tool
  • They also like the idea of having physical interactions, but modifying the room layout (e.g. an actuated floor) might be too much

With the above information, the direction of our project is becoming clear. We will continue to explore the interactive problem solving experience and develop more concrete ideas in that realm.