Immersive Experience Design
HvA Circular x United
Showcasing of reaching the base level in iED with the example of the worked-out user journey map
Showing students and employees the short term effects of waste separation is the main goal of our VR experience.
To effectively reach this goal, we will create a VR experience where we show the effects of waste separation.
Through a recycling process in a waste factory, the students will be educated in a playful and modern way.
In addition to that, several interactions and minigames, getting the player immersed and interested to play and come back to the game.
At first, the player will see an old rusty, and polluting factory, that can be upgraded by the players collected points, that they can earn in AR as well as in the minigames. By upgrading the factory, not only the atmosphere brightens up also more machines are added and more waste is being recycled, which means there is a more sustainable waste behaviour popping up every time a player upgrades something. When all the upgrades are succeeded, the player can win a reward which will be specifically for students such as a discount at SPAR.
Lets visualize that:
OUR storyline:
Desirability: The students are triggered by the prize as well as the goals to upgrade the whole factory to get a satisfying visualization of a clean and environmentally friendly space.
Satisfactory: The player will be entertained by the ongoing waste separation process that he/she can view by just walking around the factory in VR.
In addition to that, the interactive minigames involve the player in the process which gets their attention and will to continue und til they can win the prize in the end.
Usability: Since the whole factory in one room/ on one level, the user always has an overview and can teleport him/herself to certain areas, so that it should be a clear play flow. At the same time, the player is being given responsibility in having complete freedom where to go and what to do and a chance to explore themselves.
Utility: The experience is useful in a way of working on the long-term goals to change their waste behavior around the campus as well as at home. Starting with this VR experience to enhance that is quite a challenge since students are on a different educational level concerning their awareness of this waste problem. Besides that, this product is very useful for our target group to tackle this issue where they will remember this experience the next time they walk up to the same bin they have scanned to enter the game.
Efficiency: It is possible to learn quickly in the experience since the upgrades will follow immediately when they have been unlocked. So the process is easy to follow and the user can adapt easily.
Effective: The product is still in development but interactions such as the claw minigame and the conveyor belt system is working.
Safety: It is very safe especially since the user has full control over all his/her actions. If there is the will of the player to interact, it is possible but if not he/she can also just enjoy and watch the process.
First process map
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The user starts the VR game and joins the factory. The first thing they'll see is a pile of mixed garbage, the claw minigame, a conveyor belt and an incinerator. By using the claw, the user can put the waste on the conveyor belt after which it'll be moved to the incinerator to be burned. This is a dirty process so there's a lot of smoke coming out of the incinerator. At this point there is no waste separation.
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The user sees that it's possible to upgrade the factory using points that are either collected in the AR application or by doing small interactions in the VR factory (for example the claw minigame or picking up litter around the factory and putting it in the right waste bins).
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After the first upgrade, the factory will consist of the waste pile, the claw, the conveyor belt, the magnet and the incinerator. The rest of the waste is moved on to the incinerator to be burned. Now at least metal can be recycled. This update might also add an automated way to move waste from the waste pile to the conveyor belt so that the user doesn't have to keep doing it manually with the claw.
4. The next updates will add more machines which can (in the same way as the magnet does) separate different types of waste from the main conveyor belt. I've found two very useful images that show the different machines that we can add to this concept (bottom of this page). All of these machines can have some kind of minigame/interaction that the user can do to gain more points. This way the user will also see that with every update, the waste that's burned in the incinerator will be less and less.
5. Eventually, with all the updates, (almost) everything will be separated to be recycled so there will be (almost) nothing left to be burned in the incinerator.
6. The last update could be the recycling of plastic in the factory. This could lead to the creation of the bottles which is the ending of the game. At this point the factory will automatically sort as much waste as possible and there will be nothing left to burn.
Exchanged pictures with models
Part of the process: changed pictures with moe updated models and our inspiration for the factory background.
We have to go more into detail about the exact upgrades, how they will pop up, how does it look in VR, how many machines are being added?
Brainstorming for procedures of the different upgrades:
UPGRADE 0: Waste - A conveyor belt - Incinerator
[Different kind of waste is being transported by a conveyor belt into a polluting incinerator that is burning the waste]
UPGRADE 1: A new conveyor belt is unlocked
METAL Claw - waste - conveyor belt- incinerator
A new conveyor belt pops up, showing the recycling process of metal:
Mixed waste- conveyor belt - Magnet - conveyor belt - recycled metal cube
[The user can play the claw minigame and sort out specific types of waste to separate it in a fun way.
Then you can see the waste being transported on the new conveyor belt and the metal being sorted out by the magnet which has a button to press for the player to activate it as another interactive minigame]
UPGRADE 2: A new conveyor belt is unlocked in addition to the metal one
GLAS Mixed waste - conveyor belt - crusher - recycled glass bottle
[The user can see mixed waste being processed on the new conveyor belt and a crusher is added by the upgrade. The user can manually sort the glass bottles, crush them themselves, or activate the crusher for another interaction and an added automatic process.]
UPGRADE 3: A new conveyor belt is unlocked in addition to the metal & glass one
PAPER Mixed waste - manual sorting (interaction) - Paper bales
[The user can manually sort out paper from the conveyor belt as an interactive minigame]
UPGRADE 4: A new conveyor belt is unlocked in addition to the metal & glass & paper one
PLASTIC Mixed waste - plastic Melter - rotary cutter - plastic bales - recycled plastic bottle - win price
[The user can see two newly added machines that melt the plastic and cut it into bales. The rotary cutter can also be activated manually by the user. When the plastic is being formed into bales, a recycled plastic bottle will appear which is the price for the user and the goal of our game.]
Visualizing the user journey map in VR
Überschrift 1
USER TESTING
The questionnaire before the user will test the prototype:
*Have you been to a waste factory or something similar before?
*If yes, how was your feeling afterwards? What waste separation processes are familiar to you?
*What do you think about waste separation and are you actively taking action during your daily life?
*Did you separate your waste on the HvA campus and if so, how?
The questioner after the user will test the prototype:
*Did you feel like you knew what to do when you first entered the application?
*What emotion did you feel while testing our application?
*What is the first thing you would personally change after playing the application?
*Did you feel like something was missing when you played through our application?
*What do you think about the current style of the environment?
*On a scale of 1 to 10, how far do you think we're into creating an immersive experience?
*Did you learn anything new while testing our application?
27/11/2020 Today I went to campus with Josephine and Danielle and made the user testing with the students from our Minor.
All in all I had the feeling most of the people from game development enjoyed the factory because they knew how to teleport and how certain actions work out of experience but for first timer user or just unexperienced VR users it was harder to understand the process and to handle the game.
Summary:
A lot of people were confused about what to do in the factory since not all interactions are programmed yet this was quite difficult to let them play without explaining anything in advance. We need to find a solution to this. Maybe with arrows, a guidance voice or some light elements. Also, the learning aspect of waste management is not clear yet for the player. What was very positive was the feedback about the playfulness and the style of the game. Also, a lot of students took more time playing it because they were so into it which is also a good sign, which also meant we had a bigger delay during the testing.
It is important that the goals get clear from the beginning on and that the user maybe also enters exactly from where the first interaction starts.
In addition, we still need to develop sound and the full working progress with the updates etc.
MENU OF THE IPAD
To tackle the appeared problem:
We added an iPad as a guide for the player. It gives clear instructions on what task to fulfill, where to go, and what steps are next.
It is attached to the user's wrist during the whole game to show the user the next steps in the experience.
After the last upgrade, the iPad shows a fun Animation about the end of this waste separation experience.
What : the Vr user map helped me:- The different arrangements and orders of a VR game and how to tackle certain steps such as visuals and atmosphere. As well as the layout of a 3D environment translated from a 2D sketch.
How: We researched how we want to build our storyboard, tried out different techniques. But since the idea of our experience (first AR combined with VR) changed through the process (only VR) we had to make adjustments to find the right way to visualize our experience.
We made several process maps in order to get first all the machines that we needed for the process in a document. Then we decided on order and on different upgrades to make it more fun and interactive for the user instead of just watching a factory process. (see process map). We explained every upgrade in detail and how it's adding to the experience and what is changing in the next upgrade.
We have decided on the easy style of the maps to recognize the different conveyor belts, their machines, and processes. (Check the legend underneath the user map on the overall page)
Why: For a clear workflow and a good layout of the factory, a user map was necessary. We had to understand how to behave in this environment since we are also part of the target group. Also as a communication system, this map was very helpful between the different fields of expertise. (AMFI and game development). This helped a lot as a translation document of design steps that are formed into codes and interactions.