AR/VR Based Experience Design
Building Virtual World
Building Virtual Worlds (BVW) is a well-known and popular course in the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University. It challenges students to work quickly, creatively and collaboratively. BVW gives small teams of students of 5 two weeks to create a virtual world, with new groups and goals for each round. Selected worlds will be presented in a public festival to hundreds of spectators – and an incredible sense of accomplishment.
In the first semester of my graduate life, I took the course and participated in 5 worlds during 10 weeks, and 1 of them was selected into the public festival. My involvements in this course include managing teams, organizing playtesting, conducting research, iterating experience storylines, designing characters and environment, and editing sound effects.
Project
Team of 5
Time Span
10 weeks
My Role
Producer, 2D artist, UI Designer, interaction designer, and sound engineer
Tool Used
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Jira, Google suite, Procreate, Audition, Logic pro
Table of Contents
— An immersive experience with DDR dance mat and Makey Makey
Selected for the Festival
— A Virtual Reality world made with Oculus Quest 2
— A space-themed rhythm game for the Oculus Quest 2 using hand tracking
— A Virtual Reality world made with Oculus Quest 2
— An Augmented Reality world made with Microsoft Hololens 2
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02.
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Click here to check out my takeaways throughout the whole course, and also my peer evaluation!
01. Four Paws Are Better Than One
DDR Dance Mat + Makey Makey
An interactive immersive game using DDR Dance mat and Makey Makey based on an interesting storyline and contained 3 innovative mini-games in sequence. Players will help the characters in the game to achieve their goals of finding jobs by using and operating the equipments we provide.
My Role: Producer, 2D Artist, UX Designer, Sound Engineer
Time Span: 2 weeks
Team: Yuchan Wu, Angela Zhang, Qiujie Wu, Tongzhou Wang, Yu Li
Project Requirements & Needs
Make something fun! Especially when people can collaborate and share exciting moments together.
My Involvements
Team Management
Organized the ideations, meetings and task tracker. Arrange and conduct playtestings and workshops with professors.
User Experience Design
Designed interaction and game flow. Also designed the storyline and narrative for the background story and the game mechanism.
Graphic design
Designed the 2D characters and environment for the background story.
Sound editing and recording
Recorded the voice over for the main character, composed the background music, and produced the sound effects.
Game Description
A pair of good friends went for a job together, but the boss from the company rejected them and said he only accepted one. However, the two characters continued begging for an opportunity to prove themselves. In the end, the boss agreed to give both of them jobs if they show him collaboration skills. In the following gameplay, you need to accomplish three mini games in order to get the offer.
Final Product
Come and check out our final video!
Key Moments
02. One More Day
Virtual Reality Game
A Virtual Reality world made with Oculus Quest 2. You are a mom who survived the Chornobyl Disaster. One day your daughter wants to get back because she misses her old toys, so you sneak back to your old house and collect different things for her. However, in the end, you find out that your daughter was already dead in the disaster. This game is designed according to the Chornobyl disaster.
My Role: Producer, UX Designer, Sound Engineer
Time Span: 2 weeks
Team: Yuchan Wu, Jimmy Chen, Nolan Pearson, Kayi Ng, Xiaoying Wang
Project Requirements & Needs
The topic for this round is “story“. We are supposed to tell a story and create a narrative driven game.
My Involvements
Team Management
Organized team meetings and everyday task tracker. Conducted workshops with professors. Arranged task planning and documents in teams.
User Experience Design
Designed the storyline and narrative for the story and the game mechanism. Also designed interaction and game flow.
Sound editing and recording
Recorded the voice over for the main character, composed the background music, and produced the sound effects.
Game Description
You are a mom who survived the Chernobyl Disaster. One day your daughter wants to get back because she misses her old toys, so you sneak back to your old house and collect different things for her. However, at the end, you find out that your daughter was already dead in the disaster. This game is designed according to the Chernobyl disaster.
Final Product
Come and check out our final video!
Key Moments
03. Astrobeat
Virtual Reality Game + Hand Tracking
A space-themed rhythm game for the Oculus Quest 2 using hand tracking! Hit the holographic bongos to the beat in order to blast asteroids away from your spaceship and escape the asteroid field!
My Role: Sound Engineer
Time Span: 1 week
Team: Lochlan Belford, Caitlyn Lenhoff, Justin Yook, Leah Lee, Yuchan Wu
Project Requirements & Needs
This is a one-week project, the aim of this round is to create a dynamic and interesting game which is fun to play.
My Involvements
User Experience Design
Designed the game mechanism with teammates and composed several versions of background music into the game.
Background music composing, sound editing
Recorded the voice over for the main character, composed the background music, and produced the sound effects.
Game Description
A space-themed rhythm game for the Oculus Quest 2 using hand tracking! Hit the holographic bongos to the beat in order to blast asteroids away from your spaceship and escape the asteroid field!
Final Product
Come and check out our final video!
Key Moments
04. Twinkle In The Dark
Virtual Reality Game
A Virtual Reality world made with Oculus Quest 2. Lights burn out on a cold rainy day, and my little sister was so scared by herself. As her elder brother, how am I going to support and help her get out of this scary moment?
My Role: UX Designer, Sound Engineer
Time Span: 2 weeks
Team: Hagan Miller, Bokang Wang, Muru Chen, Xinyi Guo, Yuchan Wu
Project Requirements & Needs
The topic of this round is about “helping”. We were supposed to create a game that shows character A helps and protects character B.
My Involvements
User Experience Design
Designed the storyline and narrative for the story and the game mechanism. Also designed interaction and game flow.
Background music composing, sound editing
Recorded the voice over for character B, composed the background music, and produced the sound effects.
Game Description
Character B is my little sister, the person who is helping character B, which is character A, me, her elder brother. Story happened on a rainy night, the electricity suddenly burned out. She was so scared and didn’t know what to do. Therefore I helped her solve problems step by step. In the end, she finally lit up the string light on the wall, overcame the scray by herself and was cured by the warm lights.
Final Product
Come and check out our final video!
05. Boba Shop
Augmented Reality Game
An Augmented Reality world made with Microsoft Hololens 2. In this story, you are a newly recruited waiter/waitress in a boba shop. You need to learn how to make boba tea in a very short period of time. After that, you will receive an ability test of whether you can offer the correct boba tea to the customers. Good luck!
My Role: UX Designer, Sound Engineer
Time Span: 2 weeks
Team: Yukti Gupte, Jerry Yu, Jingyuan Kang, Robin Xie, Yuchan Wu
Project Requirements & Needs
The topic of this round is about “naive guests”. We were supposed to create a game that shows any naive guest can play without direct instruction.
My Involvements
Conduct playtesting and accompolished the user interviews
Game Description
In this story, you are a newly recruited waiter/waitress in a boba shop. You need to learn how to make boba tea in a very short period of time. After that, you will receive an ability test of whether you can offer the correct boba tea to the customers. Good luck!
Final Product
Come and check out our final video!
Sound editing and recording
Recorded the voice over for the main character, composed the background music, and produced the sound effects.
Takeaways and feedbacks
At the end of the semester, we are supposed to write peer evaluations for each of the team members we’ve collaborated with. Therefore, this is what I got: