producing Immersive Experiences for Good
Elysian Heights: Ironclad
worldbuilding for a live Immersive exhibit to Reconnect the austin public to the heart of work.
Team
CO-LEADS: Phoebe Lin & Ethan Luong
Demi Hu, Amber Hutchon, Kate Korepova, Yiming Pan, Adrian Gonzales, Chris Davila
Skills
Leadership, Jira Project Management, Narrative Architecture,
World Building, Interaction Design
[ACTIVE project]
Overview
A ticketed immersive experience exhibit open to the Austin public in the Spring of 2024.
We have industry mentors giving advice throughout all four iterations.
"What is Partnerism?"
"Its a 32 person writing room! That's crazy!"
In collaboration with our client Netspend, Ironclad is one of five activations pitched by a 32 students for an in-person immersive experience exhibit for the Austin Public in Spring 2024. I helped lead a team of 8 to adapt the classic story of Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz into an immersive showcase to reconnect the Austin public to the heart of work.
In this case study, I wanted to outline the 4 iterative sprints that my team has pitched to our client Netspend over the course of 6 weeks to build and deliver this content bible.
Client Brief
For our sponsor Netspend, my team delved into narrative architecture, worldbuilding, and interaction design to educate and immerse the Austin in the theme of Partnerism, a modern economic model by Riane Eisler.
According to the Partnerism.org website:
We can’t safely build a 21st Century world on an 18th Century operating system. The economic and social systems of the world are failing humanity and our planet. We are experiencing serious breakdowns:
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Environmental crises
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Health and wellness crises
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Immense wealth gap
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Systemic racial, gender, and religious biases
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Child abuse and mental health crises
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Political systems that can’t solve these problems
Our focus was on addressing the economic aspect of Partnerism, emphasizing the need for a more inclusive and sustainable economy that values people and nature as true wealth.
"A caring economics of Partnerism recognizes that the real wealth of our world consists of the contributions of people and of nature."
iteration 1: Simple Story
After Ethan and I set up the Jira, I assigned the tasks and announced a time to meet.
1. On Figma, we first broke down the original story of the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz into the simple "Once Upon a Time..." structure.
2. We then adapted the simple story structure to follow a Partnerism theme. Chris suggested that we each take 5 minutes to write our own versions before pitching it for the whole group to vote as shown above.
3. We presented a rough first draft of our proposed simple story and potential activation ideas to our industry mentors after this one week class sprint.
Industry / mentor feedback
I know. The pitch deck isn't pretty. Since this was our very first draft, my team and I had to grow accustomed to the time restraints placed on us by the rapid prototyping stage commonly expected in industry. We improved the design of the pitch deck as we slowly gravitated towards a sci-fi steampunk theme in future iterations.
Our mentors presented feedback asking us to further emphasize the theme of work and productivity in our presentation, and applauded our efforts to adapt to a short timeframe.
Other design flaws and potential improvements asked us to SIMPLIFY.
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The story is too complex. Narrow down modern tin man story 1-2 takeaways.
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Simplify again. Focus on either changing the company, changing the person, or changing the person which translates to changing the company.
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SIMPLIFY! Cool idea, but we have to consider the scope limiting us to a 15 minute experience.
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Potential idea. A possible idea is focusing on tin man as having lost his humanity and no longer deeming himself human now that he doesn’t have his name (or forgot his name). We help him find his humanity by finding his real name (Nick Chopper).
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Another idea. Emphasize being a cog in the machine as a bigger theme.
ITERATION 2: Worldbuilding
In our 32 person writing room, our class decided on several key features of the world including sci-fi, steampunk, and splitting each 8-person team into the four pillars of Partnerism, one for each character in the Wizard of Oz: the Lion, Tin Man, the Witch, and the Scarecrow (and the user as Dorothy).
industry / mentor / client Feedback
From Riane Eisler, founder of Partnerism, and the industry mentors:
Overall, the mentors suggested that we wanted to show a character arc of Tinman going from cold hearted to a very rational worker who embraces his human heart. While the user (as Dorothy) shows him this compassion to drive this arc, we wanted to further emphasize connectivity and a caring connection in driving Tinman's story. All in all, every feedback session included: EMPHASIZE CARING.
ITERATION 3:Designing Interaction
At this point, our team hit a roadbump in the rapid design sprint journey. We still weren't sure what Riane Eisler's "emphasize caring" meant for our interactions and the turnaround was extremely tight since our Worldbuilding pitch.
After discussing with my co-lead Ethan, who was more busy at this time of the semester, I decided to lead a voting discussion for each person's best idea so we had a M.V.P. pitch that we can get feedback on for the next day. A majority vote led us to pitch Amber's initial idea.
industry / mentor / client Feedback
Design flaw. The interaction is extremely digital and doesn't use the physical space. The projector screen is "like a big i-Pad."
"Think of one of Partnerism's questions: Why isn't the hardwork of caring for children a part of GDP?"
-Riane Eisler
Action symbolism. In the action of "wiping away" work-related words, another reveal is that we reveal that he was originally a caregiver with a heart different than what put on factory floor. A.K.A. "Reveal the other types of jobs that aren't being respected."
Empty space. Seems like there is a lot of empty space in middle, why are we in a row like a worker? It could be metaphor for worker line assembly line.
ITERATION 4: Interactions Again.
After our 3rd iteration, it was time for us to put together a final pitch and content bible for the panel of mentors, sponsors, and the founder of Partnerism herself, Riane, who were invited for the final presentations. This was an difficult season in the semester where most students were burned out on midterms. My co-lead, Ethan, who was able to host impromtu meetings earlier in the semester, could not be as active for these discussions so I had to take the lead.
In the last meeting, I felt my usually eager team's energy dip; So I decided to use one of my creative superpowers: I stepped back to look at the bigger picture by listening carefully to each teammates concerns and thought through each feedback before pitching a solution.
Then, it clicked. Quickly I drafted these drawings and showed it to my team for feedback.
I pitched this solution for these reasons which were all later also highlighted by our mentors:
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This simple story of restoring Tin Man's past memories by reminding him of the "caring uses" of his limbs touched on the caretaking work of Partnerism.
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By encouraging users to "step out of the factory line" to aid the dismembered robot in the middle, it uses the space to tell the story of helping him recover from destructive productivity.
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By adding the physical component of re-connecting Tin Man to his limbs and memories of using them for caregiving, the digital projection component is balanced with the physical interaction.
In the team discussion of this solution, Demi came up with a clever way of clarifying the story by suggesting that his limbs aren't just visually "missing" in the memory, rather, they are visually "glitching" so the users didn't assume that he just didn't have arms in the past!
And finally...
the Ironclad pitch
With that, I delegated tasks on Jira and my co-lead Ethan returned from his midterms to help host a content bible work night before the final presentation. We worked together to write a script, new simple story, and user flow for the experience. I put together a quick 3D visualization of the 10x10 space in Roblox.
Also, since we are adapting the Tin Man story, we decided to rename him "Ironclad" instead.
After a total of 6 weeks, drum roll please for the fourth iteration pitch deck...
Iteration 4: pitch deck
industry / mentor / client / Sponsor Feedback
"I just love the visual with the robot and the projection coming from behind its head. I'm excited to build a robot!" - Rigel Benton, Staff Designer at Niantic 8th Wall
"The experience is simple which is good. I don't want to overcomplicate this but what if there's story beats for picking the wrong limbs for the robot?" - Shane Reilly, Fabrication Mentor at ReillyWorks
"This communicates the Partnerism message very well." - Riane Eisler, founder of Partnerism
"The disembodied robot is leveling up the story of destructive productivity and once users reattach the arms, have some signal value of warranting loss of productivity...like a sound of whirring to as each arm is reattached" - Lucy Sheils, Sound Designer at Meta
"Loved that this is very streamlined and concept is super clear. There's potential for collecting audience memories of caretaking as well"
- Caro Murphy, Interactive Game & Experience Designer
Reflection
More to come!
I wanted to highlight this project because of the fast-paced iterative design journey process along with the lessons I've learned from industry mentors (SIMPLIFY!). When it comes to worldbuilding, I will always refer back to this process where I start with the simple story first whether I'm designing for homebrew D&D games or future clients.
I also wanted to appreciate the strong team dynamic of the 7 people I've worked with here. Without Amber's quick thinking, we wouldn't have had the interaction MVP for me to develop better solution with, and without teammates like Demi, we would need to do a lot more work to clarify visual design. As for the leadership experience, I've gained experience using Jira to manage tasks and in co-leading which has proved helpful in both building a strong supportive team culture and delegating tasks to each other during our busier seasons of the school year as well.
A lot will change from here on out as we proceed to iterating on the activations as updates on budget and playtesting arrive. I will be re-entering this project in Spring 2024 as a part of the UX Design team to further iterate upon all five activations in which Ironclad is a part of.