Stage 1: Physical touchpoint

The player places a Greeni fiducial code in their living space and scans it with an iPad to enter the world of Greeni.

Stage 2: Entering the digital world

Upon tapping the plant in the first scene, the player is welcomed by a large city that they can explore and is prompted to start the game.

Stage 3: Visualizing the problem

The player is shown a simple and easy-to-digest visualization of how climate change causes rapidly rising temperatures within cities.

Stage 4: Offering a solution

After explaining the problem, the hero of the game is introduced to the player!

This little tree teaches the player how it can cool down metropolitan areas using the water vapor that it releases.

Stage 5: Saving the day!

Then, the player is brought back to the city and is prompted to build green spaces around the city to help lower the temperature. Each time the player builds a green space, a short fact about how that specific natural space (community garden, park, living wall, etc) can help the city will appear. The thermometer level on the right side of the scene will also drop lower as more green spaces are added to the city.

Stage 6: Extending the journey

Once all the green spaces are built, the game ends and the player is encouraged to plant something into their neighborhood.

Product demonstration video

Watch a walkthrough of Greeni!

User interviews

As this project was constrained by its medium (an AR experience that’s only accessible via iPad), I decided to work backwards to find a user group and climate change topic that naturally suited the medium. I quickly learned that a large group of iPad users are city-dwelling children and used this user group as the starting point of my research.

I interviewed 6 children between the ages of 6 to 12 from friends and family to better understand their interests, hobbies, and attitudes on climate change. I discovered that most of the interviewees are city-dwellers who interact with nature through neighborhood parks and visit to walking trails with their parents.

Findings

I also asked each interviewee to rate how climate aware they are and how willing they are to help the environment. Most respondents were not very aware of climate change but were generally willing to help make a difference. Based on the target audience’s characteristics, I decided to craft a light-hearted game to gently introduce an aspect of climate change that was easily relatable to the city-dwelling audience: over-heating cities.

The player is introduced to a large city in augmented reality through an iPad and is prompted to start the game.

The player is briefly taught about climate change through visuals within the city scene.

Then the player learns that the city is affected by warming climates as well as the negative consequences of overheating cities.

The player is introduced to a solution to the rising climates in the city and learns how plants can help cool down urban spaces.

The player is prompted to add green spaces into the city to help lower the temperature. As the player builds more nature, fun facts about each green space will appear.

Once all green spaces are filled in, the player wins the game!

Beginning scene when the player first enters the game

I built Greeni using Reality Composer and is fully playable on an iPad. If you would like to play the game, please let me know and I'm happy to share the download file!

Prompt for the player to begin the game

Scene describing how heat is trapped in the city (scene taken in Reality Composer)

Details of how plants can help cool down urban areas

Prompt to interact with the green space to cool down the city

Player-interactive facts about the garden and the green wall

Player-interactive facts about the park

Player-interactive facts about the rooftop garden

Game completed!