Overview
Sustainabear is a final year project aiming to reinforce sustainable action in nature
My final FYP project was targeted towards children to create an interactive experience with endangered species during their visits to parks and nature walks. Most people want to act more sustainably, but these actions can often be forgotten about. This with a lack of education makes it hard for people to act sustainably.
Using a phone park users can scan placards placed around the area to unlock special endanger animals who tell the user a little bit about themselves and ask the user to help them by asking parents about sustainability.
Roles
AR Application Designer
User Research
Testing
Programming
Artist
The Problem
An initial survey showed insight into how possible users feel about climate change and sustainability.
Strongly agree or agree
climate change is an urgent issue.
Believe individuals living sustainably will have a
positive impact on the environment.
Easily forget to carry out sustainable action, while another 34% believed it was too expensive.
Connect negative words to climate change.
Software
AR applications are being developed and improved constantly, it was important to test several applications before choosing one to create this application. After testing eight different software applications Unity with the Vuforia plug-in was the stand out application. Gamification was possible as well as a lot of control on how users interact with the application as a whole. Learning C# was vital for this projects progression.
Placards
As this was the first thing a user or none user would see it was vital the design stood out as well as hinting to what animal was hidden inside. The placards also had to fit Vulforia's image marker guidelines.
These were tested as markers in a local park to be sure they were easy to scan.
Character Design
The final character prototype was heavily influenced by crochet animals. Using a teddy bear bases was important as children - our target demographic - personify teddy's and use them as a device to help discover emotions. These different facial expression's show the animals need for help.
Check out this Explainer Video for more information
