Project Overview
This project explored how immersive environments can support playful learning. The concept evolved from an educational cooking idea into a game-like mushroom picking experience, combining knowledge transfer with narrative-driven interaction. We wanted to explore how tacit knowledge, in this case foraging and food-related knowledge, could be learned through embodied interaction rather than text-based instruction.
The final concept places the user in a forest where they are shrunk to mushroom size and tasked with collecting different mushroom species for a narrative-driven goal. Scale, navigation, and environmental storytelling were used to turn simple actions into engaging challenges. The desired outcome for the user is a deepened knowledge and engagement related to mushroom picking, hopefully sparking confidence and motivation do exercise it in real life as well.
The process
The concept was developed using both 2D and 3D methods of sketching environments and interactive sequences. The software OpenBrush was used extensively during the development of the concept, both as a mean to sketch, but also in the end to create the environments and interactive elements in the final prototype you see in the video.
Apart from being highly invovled in multiple faucets of this concept's creation, my biggest contribution to the project was to draw/model the virtual space and its inhabiting objects using OpenBrush.
The project team:
Me │ Chenxuan Mu │ Zhengyi Ruan