Organized Research for the California Academy of Science (O.R.C.A.S)
Description
Project O.R.C.A.S. was a collaboration between the ETC and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, CA. The focus of the project was to identifying areas for enhancement and evaluating feasibility within the Academy’s vision.
How it came to be
With a planetarium, aquarium, indoor rainforest and a state of the art green facility, the Academy offers a myriad of topics and a plethora of content that is the cornerstone for creating a meaningful experience, as a team it was important to tie these contents together in a seamless yet entertaining experience, have Academy enthusiasts engaged not only inside of the Academy but outside as well. Hence as a team we came up with an Achievement and Avatar System that would not only tie together each section and content available, but also it would make users want to explore and get more involved with the Academy.
The design of the system was conceived to be mostly children friendly as the demographic we found that was predominant in the academy were children. However we wanted to cater this system to everyone so we decided on designing goals that both adults and children could complete. Also visually, we wanted to appeal to every patron keeping it clean and playful.
The result of our design and research got approved by the Academy and got carried over the next semester with Project Spike.