The Tumbleweeds Film Festival, put on by the Utah Film Center, is a festival designed for kids and youth. Fellow XR filmmaker, Carol Dalrymple, and I were asked to pitch an engaging VR or AR experience for the participants. We created an AR scavenger hunt where kids used a smart device to scan clues throughout the festival spaces. The scavenger hunt delivered an educational experience about the innovations in storytelling from the history of film.
We designed the experience using ZapWorks Studio. This platform allows for custom interactions and can be deployed over WebAR––no app needed. We wanted a physical component in the experience, so we created a foldable cube with the QR codes clues printed on it. Participants came to our booth, folded a cube and then could scan a QR code on the cube and wave their smart device over the corresponding clue in the festival space. When participants had completed all four clues, they could come back to the booth to received an “answer cube” which had both the QR codes and clues (tracking images) printed on it for a self-contained AR scavenger hunt.
We went through several iterations of our UX design and cube design. We focused on making the experience simple and sustainable––often XR experiences require many people to run. Our experience needed only one person to sit at the booth. However, we quickly learned that our two cube system was confusing to people, so we stopped giving out answer cubes and had participants only borrow our QR code clue cubes.
We used several icons for our tracking images from the branding assets for the festival. An unintended consequence of this decision meant that we could scan ANY similar icon on any festive poster, brochure or shirt and the corresponding AR experience would appear. While not planned, we did enjoy the increased reach of our AR scavenger hunt.
In addition to the scavenger hunt, we taught a DIY Augmented Reality Workshop. Students who participated in our session, learned about several AR platforms, uses of AR and made their own AR postcard. We had students do our AR scavenger hunt afterwhich we elaborated on how the way we tell stories keeps evolving and allows for new forms of expression. We gave them an assignment to reveal something. As groups they filmed a 10 second clip based on the theme. We then reconvened and in real-time, we attached their clips to the AR postcards we had printed prior to the workshop. We used Zappar Designer which is a well featured, online AR design platform. Zappar makes AR accessible which we believe is crucial with an emerging medium. Check out the video below to see the scavenger hunt and workshop.
