The project
For Digifest, its annual education event, Jisc wanted an interactive, immersive story that took visitors through a day in the life of a student ten years from now. It had to be simple for booth staff to run and easy for visitors to use, and to feel realistic without suggesting that people would no longer be needed in education.
The viewer sees everything as Natalie, a student of combined Geography and History in 2029, and chooses what she does through her day. She puts on AR smart glasses, picks a virtual field trip or a collaborative learning session, is interrupted by her dog, Fred, and checks in with her tutor by holographic projection before meeting them in person.
What we did
Ben Huss co-produced NATALIE_4.0 with The Fred Company and was its technical lead, in a team that included Rosie Collins, Sununu Hernandez and Axel Drioli. Make Real partnered with The Fred Company to create the narrative, told as a short 360 film with branching choices, and then took the footage into a Unity app for the Oculus Go headset, adding an augmented reality overlay and the logic for the choices.
How it was shown
It ran at Digifest, at the Birmingham ICC on 12 and 13 March 2019, with 15 headsets on the booth for visitors to try. Make Real reports a consistent queue, and plenty of discussion afterwards.
It was made to provoke discussion, and it did: some visitors wanted the technology in place now, while others called it a “dystopian future”.
Credits
- Client
- Jisc
- Developer
- Make Real
- Narrative
- The Fred Company
- Co-producer and technical lead
- Ben Huss
- Team
- Rosie Collins, Sununu Hernandez and Axel Drioli