Virtual Reality platform for online learning
Hurricane Heroes
COMPANY
Meteor Studio
ROLE
UX Designer
EXPERTISE
Task management, Design team co-ordination, Experience design, Scene design, User interface design, 3D modeling
YEAR
2024
Overview
An asynchronous cross-platform (Oculus + Desktop) Dreamscape experience for Intro to Meteorology Lab students, with a focus on hurricane forecasting, decision making and safety procedures. The project is consisting of three acts, in each one, student is in a different persona, different situation, tackling the challenges. There are quiz questions in the scenes which promotes critical thinking and problem solving skills. In the beginning of the project, I was part of the design team, later promoted to the Design lead. I take on design task related to modeling, environment design, scene design, user interface design, along with task management, quality assurance for deliverables, and hosting weekly design meetings.
About
This project is a collaboration between Dreamscape Learn, EdPlus, and Meteor Studio to transform education using immersive technology. Dreamscape Learn, part of Dreamscape Immersive, provides the platform for immersive learning experiences at ASU. EdPlus develops scalable digital teaching models, while Meteor Studio, an engineering research lab for AR/VR, handles the creative and technical aspects.
The project centers on a hurricane scenario inspired by Hurricane Irma, with three acts:
- Act 1: Students act as weather broadcasters, making decisions about forecasts and public communication.
- Act 2: As Hurricane Hunters, they collect data by flying into the storm's eye.
- Act 3: Students join a rescue team, assisting flood victims and providing crucial information for navigating the crisis.
Design
Main menu
The scene starts with a menu where students can choose any act to play. I designed the main selection interface, featuring cards with images representing each act. Clicking a card flips it to reveal a brief description and a button to start the act.
Act one
In Act one, the student embodies the role of a weather board-caster and process information through various graphs and answering questions. For this scene, I worked on layout design, 3d modeling, scene design, and background characters with animation. Most of the functionalities are similar in the desktop and VR version.
Act three
Act 3 is extensive and divided into three segments. It begins inside a house as the hurricane strikes, transitions to a call center where students gather more information, and culminates at the coastline, devastated by the hurricane, where rescue operations take place. I contributed to the coastline scene by designing the layout, modeling the terrain and houses, creating water shaders, designing panels for quizzes, and designing the student's interaction with the scene.
Conference
Currently I am leading the design team for the Hurricane Heroes project. In January 2024, I got a chance to showcase the project in the Arizona State University’s Innovation Summit, along side our project’s developer and project manager. We represented it to a lot of sponsors along with the Director of ASU, Micheal Crow.
