Mar 20
Learn the rainforest with Sr. David Attenborough
I hope that through doing positive, meaningful, purpose-driven, expressive, immersive experiences, I do think we can change people’s perception, I do think we can build the empathy, I do think we can activate and motivate people to be better and do the right things and make better decisions.
- Jamie Davies, Creative Director of Factory 42
The Green Planet is a nature documentary series centered around the relationship between plants, animals, and the environment. The Green Planet AR experience is led by Factory 42 and BBC Earth, and I got the chance to experience the demo, a session of the five-session experience, in the 2022 SXSW XR Experience Exhibition. In the AR experience, Sr. David Attenborough guides the player to explore a rainforest. The experience aims to make players gain a deeper understanding of ecosystems and the wild by seeing the life of the plants and animals.
Exploring Experience
In the AR experience at London’s Piccadilly Circus, there are real plants in the entire space to simulate the real scene. The player will be given a phone to scan every corner while walking through the space and a headphone to listen to Sr. David Attenborough’s guide transformed into a 3D hologram.
On the contrary, in the SXSW demo, I was also given a headphone and a phone, but the plants were replaced by wallpapers. As a result, I did not feel completely immersed in the experience but distracted when I saw other people moving and walking in my background.
My task is to find five appointed items. I walked through the space and tried to use my phone to scan every corner. Sometimes I had to face the camera to the ceiling, and sometimes I had to move the camera close to the ground.
👍 Good Features
Hint
When I could not find an animal or did not know where to go next, a white arrow showed up on my screen, hinting me the direction to find it. In the audio, Sr. David Attenborough, the guide, also gently informed me what I was looking for and where it would normally appear. When I finally found the animal, the guide said the animal is very good at hiding and camouflaging. I personally think this is very thoughtful because the player will then not feel frustrated for not finding the animal and remember the animal’s character.
Status
Clear status is very important, so the players can always be aware of where they are now and have control over the pace and time. The experience has done well for informing players of the status, and I did not have to worry about how many more tasks I had to complete.
Interaction design
I found a seed in the grass. I picked it up by swiping the phone and planted it by dropping it to the land on the left. As the seed grew into a tree, Sr. David Attenborough said to me, “your tree will be living in the forest for more decades.” With the simple interaction, I feel more engaged with the experience, and it is also my first time planting a tree! I feel like doing something good for our mother earth.
Value Creation Model
Traditional learning and reading can be very boring, and this experience creates an interactive and exciting way that requires no reading to learn.
A study suggests that working memory consists of two distinct processing systems, one verbal and the other nonverbal. The verbal system processes narrative (spoken text) information while the nonverbal system processes visual (image). Thus, utilizing images and spoken texts simultaneously in this AR experience enhances the capacity of working memory.
In summary, for players and learners of all ages, The Green Planet not only intrigues their interests with the interactions and tasks in the wonder but also increases the efficiency of memorizing with visual and audio stimulation.
What The Creators Said
Having seen kids come out of it completely lit up and going “Oh my god! I need to do more, I want to recycle, mom can we plant stuff in the garden”, getting completely exctied. That gives me a lot of hope.
I hope that through doing positive, meaningful, purpose-driven, expressive, immersive experiences, I do think we can change people’s perception, I do think we can build the empathy, I do think we can activate and motivate people to be better and do the right things and make better decisions.
- Jamie Davies, Creative Director of Factory 42
Jamie said the reason why they chose to use phone devices as the medium is that people are spending a lot of time on “this rectangle thing”, and they want to make this action we do every day different.
With the complexity and high quality of the graphics and visuals, we couldn’t put all that on a mobile phone. The audio is spatialised, to add to the immersion too. The mobile phone does none of the processing — all of that is done on hardware on premise, and it’s the 5G connectivity that provides the very low latency feed to the phone.
- Stephen Stewart, CTO of Factory 42
So what do the creators and directors want to tell people through the experience?
We made a series about the fragility of the planet without making people utterly depressed.
The original ambition was to remind people of the importance of plants and how much we depend on them. We wanted to educate, entertain, and inform.
- Mike Gunton, Creative Director and Executive Producer of the Natural History Unit
Summary
The Green Planet is one of the best augmented reality experiences I have ever seen, very exciting, educational, and impressive. The experience is free in London, and I can’t wait to see it expands to other countries.
