Science Festival Belgrade AR in Education

Challenge

Science Festival Belgrade is an annual event that, through education and entertainment, attracts national and international visitors and exhibitors to make science accessible to all. LiveViewStudio was approached by MTS, regional leader in telecom services, to design an installation that would promote the use of ICT in education. The challenge was to create something that would attract an audience, foster interactivity and promote the MTS brand as an innovator. The solution proposed by LiveViewStudio was to design an interactive AR based installation.

Solution

To make the execution both nice looking and responsive - as well as to make the Augmented Reality interesting and entertaining for the user, LiveViewStudio decided to use the metaio Design. Using Design enabled them to quickly and easily try and check different scenarios and possibilities throughout the course of the project. The interactive installation involved a giant book featuring standard school subjects such as history, geography, biology and science. The subjects were presented with an AR twist, where each page came alive though different interactive scenarios. By covering and uncovering parts of the book page, visitors could trigger different animations. For example, the page featuring science and physics represented Tesla coils and all its parts in 3d;when a user covered a specific part of the page he would start the coil producing virtual high voltage thunderstorms. LiveViewStudio also used Design's support of face recognition to design a kiosk installation where an author's face would be superimposed on that of a visitor, giving them literal face-to-face explanations and stories about exhibition.

Since MTS is the leading mobile operator, the installation also included mobile AR to introduce the possibility of using a smartphone to get extra information and entertainment overlaid on common everyday objects. Through images posted on the walls of the Science festival venue, participants were able to use junaio to uncover different interesting information and be led through a discovery game. At the same time junaio channel was also used for the video message of the sponsor that was triggered by the symbols on T-shirts.

Conclusion

The installation exceeded expectation attracting significant attention of visitors. Augmented Reality proved as an effective tool for engaging people, while the prolonged interaction of participants with different AR experiences also pointed to the positive implications of using this technology in education and learning environments. Also it was featured in numerous websites and blogs such as Wired, intomobile, creativereview, and Dexigner.