Friendly Fox Adventures
Case Study
Objective
We aimed to make an app targeted at kids that encourages outdoor play. The design challenge was getting kids away from the screen with the help of a screen. We aimed to use the familiarity of an app to get them outside and setup games that they would play in the real world. Additionally, we utilised AI to further ease them away from the screen and into appreciating what is around them.
How It Plays
AR action is triggered by a series of markers in the real world, forming an interactive trail that provides an exciting alternative to typical outdoor play.
Players need to complete a series of tasks that immerse them in nature, learning about what they find and becoming more aware of the need to look after the environment on the way.
Design
When designing the app we kept in mind that we were targeting children. Therefore, we focussed on both keeping it educational and interactive, we also explored environmental factors. We made sure to have lots of colour and interactive objectives for the kids to work through. We gave everything a ‘cartoony’ and playful appearance to keep kids engaged and keen to try out more trails in the future.
Friendly Fox Adventures Objectives
Friendly Fox Adventures weaves imaginative tales into our most treasured outdoor spaces, making the wilderness both a classroom and a playground. At the heart of this unique venture is the belief that learning and exploration should be interactive, enjoyable, and interwoven with the natural world around us.
Through a series of creatively constructed quests, we have created an experience composed of multiple different objectives that seamlessly connect to each other in any order while remaining modular for future expansion.
Current Objective types:
– Scan animals
– Watch videos
– Take pictures
– Timer
– Text-based
– Listening
– Helping the environment
Expandability
We have joined up with a number of different nature trail organisations and private farmers to create unique individual apps for various locations with their own set of unique animals and quest objectives using our quest system.
Our Take
The creation of Friendly Fox Adventures has opened us up to the
possibilities of how technology, education, and the environment can all
be combined to make an enjoyable and playful experience for people of
all ages. It provides significant benefits by encouraging them to go out
on nature trails and help the environment more.
Testimonial
“Hi, I’m Cate Grundy, I’m from Friendly Fox Design, and we create interactive nature trails.
We needed to employ Unusual Technologies as consultants because we wanted to make these games called Wild Adventures. Basically, it’s based on a physical trail. At the moment, these characters are interactive, they use augmented reality, but we use a third-party app which… all it does is play videos.
With Unusual Technology, we’ve been able to gamify that, be able to create characters that give children tasks out in the wild to motivate them to play outdoors. Then they get rewards, and when they’ve visited a number of these sites and the signs, scanned them, and done the activities, and got enough rewards, they can defeat the wizard.
The great thing about working with Unusual Technologies, they’ve got experience of working on nature-based experiences before. They’ve got the same kind of values. So I can tell that they’re really interested in our project. And they communicate really well and really clearly about it, and I just feel like we’re all on the same page, really.
We’re really hoping to expand this project and sort of bring out games for different seasons and so on. And we definitely want to work with Unusual Technologies on that. This experience has taught us that we can work together really well. And bring out merchandise and all sorts of things and expansion to this. So there’s going to be lots more development work to do.”