water odyssey — María Vitaller

water odyssey

MEANINGFULLY PLAYING THE FUTURE

“HOW MIGHT WE SHOW THE POTENTIAL OF DESIGNING FOR PLAY TO THE WORLD?”

CASE

For the Milan Design Week 2018, Designskolen Kolding asked us to design a play experience to engage visitors and represent their new master programs (Play-Planet-People)

The design criteria were stated from the beginning:

Immediate Understandability
Multiplayer
Scalable Functionality
Adult Users
Social Media shareable

SOLUTION

Water Odyssey is a playful and collaborative experience that invites participants to immerse in a dystopian future to raise awareness of water scarcity.

Water Odyssey invites players to immerse themselves into the year 2050, when water is a scarce and toxic material we need to take care of and purify before we can use it. Participants are in charge of carrying the very last amount of water left in the Earth to a new mystical world, where it can be purified and stored safely.

At the entrance of the installation, the story is introduced and a carousel system provides the players with different water containers.

Visitors can choose a futuristic container to carry water on their heads or in their hands.

The water does not look clean or safe: a green light simulates toxic water that needs filtration.

And so the Odyssey begins. The visitors land in a futuristic and mystical world. Some of them, curious and adventurous, explore the room.

There are different spots in the space where they can pour their water. Others try to reach the most challenging spots. And there are groups interacting, guiding each other and taking pictures.

When the water is poured, the color in the L-E-D lighted tubes show the players that the water is being cleaned while flowing to the big container in the middle of the room. In this container, a measuring range indicates how more and more clean water is stored thanks to the players participating throughout the week.

Mission accomplished!

After exploring and going through the whole experience, the players can either pick up a new container and go again or travel back to the present with a new exciting and fulfilling experience to tell and share with others.

PROCESS

The process had a strong theoretical base on play experiences. What is play? What does it mean for adults? What types of play they feel comfortable with? What play principles should constitute a Milan Design Week experience? were some of the initially explored research questions.

Grounded on play theory, the experience design consisted of several sprints of prototyping, testing, learning, and more prototyping. Consecutive play tests at the end of the sprints provided important insights:

Innovative bodily play experiences in which the players needed to join forces to achieve something were successful and pleasant.
A meaningful, surprising and easy-to-understand storytelling layer was essential for visitors’ participation.

Therefore, we developed a coherent fiction-based storytelling in a future world where every visitor had to take responsibility on water scarcity and treat it as the precious material it is. Water Odyssey was shaped.

To turn this experience into a reality, some practical issues had to be solved regarding the water supply, materials, the budget and sponsorships.