Quartz was awarded a Google Innovation Grant to create an interactive VR or AR game. We specifically wanted to make an interactive experience that enhanced a story, so Michael Tabb and I worked in tandem to create a game.
The process of creating this on a 4 week timeline while working on other projects was intense, but I really enjoyed it. It required a level of elastic thinking and problem solving that you only really encounter with new technology.
There was A LOT to figure out.
We had to figure out: would we build our own app, or could we try to fit it into the existing Quartz app? What program would we use to build an app? Which one of our long form journalism projects would be appropriate for this platform? What great AR experiences have been created in journalism? Who is our intended audience? How can we make sure that users can enjoy the project via Android, iPhone, and desktop? What do we want this to look like? How can we make sure that the project is small enough to be opened on a phone using data?
AR technology is not standardized across platforms, and doesn’t work in certain browsers, so we ended up creating two separate, but related experiences: one for iPhones and one for Android/desktop users. Above is the Android/browser experience. If you can’t see it, it’s probably blocked by your pop blockers and/or privacy browser extensions, so please switch those off momentarily while you scroll, rotate and click through the project; it’s made to be interactive.
I used the grant funding to take a crash course in Cinema 4D, and applied that training to creating a stylized 3D experience. I art directed, modeled and textured the objects to fit within the Exceptional Humans (paywalled video series) framework.
The concept was to recreate the “Memory Palace” popularized by Sherlock. You take a string of numbers and assign names to them, and create a story. In the Android version, I put the string of numbers on one side, and once you rotate the model, you see the story played out in 3D. Nonsense stories are encouraged, it tends to make them more memorable.
This particular story goes as follows: a BUN jumps over a STICK, knocking another BUN into a GATE. Overhead, a HERO jumps over TWO TREES and lands on a VINE.
The iPhone version (only playable within Safari) is playable here.
Ultimately, I think we created an excellent prototype that would be a great memory improvement tool if it could move through multiple randomized strings of numbers, rather than one example. If you’d like to see the full project, it’s here (paywalled).