Pixverse

UX/UI Designer (Project)
Jan 2020 - April 2020 | Oakville, ON

Pixverse is an interactive experience in the form of a scavenger hunt divided into different chapters that allows each player to experience the feeling of curiosity and hope and is based on the theme of Pandora’s box.

Responsibilities
Project Management
Creative Narrative
Digital 3D Model
Front-end coding
Augmented Reality
Collaborators
Chetna (Me - UX/UI Designer)
3 UX/UI Designers (Steffi, Risi, Neora)
Tools
Adobe XD
Blender
A-frames
HTML/CSS
Javascript
Duration
14 Weeks

Problem Statement

How might we create an interactive platform to mitigate the feeling of stress & hopelessness within the students and help their curious minds to get some break from the routine during the pandemic?

Target Audience

Students feeling stressed & hopeless due to pandemic & study stress

Tired from the current routine and students require a break

Reduced curiosity is creating lack of exploration due to lethargic lifestyle in pandemic

Solution

Pixverse creates and experience that enables the players to be curious, remove them from the daily lives and give a message of hope and how curiosity can be a positive effect.

Pixverse brings an interactive web treasure hunt where the user is a witch's familiar (a curious and mischievous cat)They are able to collect digital downloads. In order to receive the next chapter, they have to sent a message to our Instagram account with the provided password. This helps us obtain metrics.

Originally, there was a physical treasure hunt along side the digital. Due to events, physical treasure hunt had to be removed which had changed the narrative and priorities. Therefore, we had to incorporate AR in a different way, and make the website the main part of the game.

Design Process

Persona

Timeline

Ideation

We began with creating a narrative arc and how the story would go. Later on we started conceptualizing and ideating the design and making the scavenger hunt more interesting, inviting and visibly pleasing. We looked through the story and created the characters that would be interacting with the users through the game. To build it further we created the Augmented Reality experience for the users and decided on the prizes that can be given to the users digitally.

Concept

Theme : Curiosity and Hope

Pandora’s curiosity is what lead her into opening the doc. Curiosity can be a positive or a dangerous trait. We want to use a person’s curiosity to lure them into playing a game that will invoke emotions of curiousness, excitement.

Treasure Hunt  

A treasure hunt that leaves the player blind on what the next step is. The player will be told don’t hit this button, don’t go here and receive clues into the next portion of the treasure hunt. In order to reach the ending, the last few clues must be obtained to decode where the final prize is.

The Ending

The player will find a box. Prompting them to not hit the button. When the button is hit, the box opens, revealing an item to take back. The box will play a message of hope. The items will represent hope, having a tag saying ‘Hope’ and Pixverse logo.

Prizes/motivation

Downloadable images

Physical & digital stickers

The final box will contain keychains (feather, crystal representing hope) containing pixverse logo.

Pain Points

Security issues

Users not willing to register and provide their information for playing the game

Loss of interest

Players may lose interest in the middle of the game

Confusing interactions

Confused on how the game works and does not know what to click next to move ahead

Platform

Digital 

Responsive website
AR
Facebook
Instagram

Physical  

Poster
Stickers
Box that includes physical computing
Keychains as prize

Experience

In the current situations a lot of students have started to lose hope and the excitement in life. This solution will help them gain it back through an interactive way.

3D Model, AR & Posters

Navigation

Using the website, the players will be able to play the game by making decisions and based on the correct decision they will move to different chapters. After winning each chapter they will get a little award as a motivation and at the end of the chapter they will be getting a key to go to the next chapter. Upon successfully completing all the chapters the users will get prizes from an animated magical box and a message of HOPE.

Wireframe

Moodboards

Visual Hierarchy

Final Product

Chapter 1

The player is introduced to the task given by the Wizard. The Wizard gives the box to the player and mentions that it is not supposed to be opened to test your curiosity.

The task is to find the Wizard's son and find the box by looking at different locations through the options provided. Upon finding the box, the Wizard will provide the player with a Key and send to the Witch.

Chapter 2

In chapter 2, the player is at Witch's house. The Witch introduces herself and when the player asks for help she refuses mentioning that the Wizard has asked not to open the box.

Later, she notices that her potion is ready as asks the player to help her pour the potion. When asked again if we can open the box again, the Witch gets mad and sends the familiar outside. However, the familiar jumps in from the window and looks for the key. The familiar finds the key which has a code message on it which the player would send further through Instagram.

Chapter 3

In this chapter, the Witch finds out that the key is with the player and asks for it. Then, the familiar runs around the Witch's house and ruins her house to save the key from her. While running around, the familiar accidentally hits the pot and spills the potion on the ground that leads the key to shrink.

Later, the familiar takes the key to the Wizard to get it fixed. Upon returning, the familiar finds out that the Witch is sick and needs medicine. However, the familiar looks for the truth serum to give to the Witch in order to learn the truth and gets to know where the box is.

Chapter 4

For this chapter the task is to find the book named "Pandora's Box" by looking around the Witch's library from different angles of it as that book has all the truth in it.

Chapter 5

In the last chapter, the task is to find Wizard's son, learn about the truth and help Wizard's son to turn to a human again from the flower.

Once, the familiar finds the cure potion to pour on the Wizard's son, he turns back into a human and thanks the player for helping him.

Reflection

Providing a solution to help kill the boredom and also motivates people to stay hopeful regarding the situation. Unable to do a physical scavenger hunt due to the Covid situation so within a short span of time, had to make the scavenger hunt online.Online learning from halfway of the project helped us learn to collaborate better without meeting one another while also meeting the deadlines and giving 100% in the project.

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