Mixed Reality Puzzle Room at Build 2018
Role: Narrative Designer + Room Host
The challenge: the audience should walk away with the single takeaway that “mixed reality is more than just a head mounted display.”
The solution: a gamified “puzzle” room using a HoloLens and an IoT device.
The puzzle room experience required two people to collaborate to solve the four puzzles in the room. Participants did this by communicating the various visual and auditory clues coming to their individual devices – a HoloLens and a hacked pendant.
After completing the puzzle, there was a debrief station where participants were walked through the technology used in the demo by one of the team’s engineers. There was also a leaderboard which recorded each team’s finishing time, adding an extra layer of gamification and competition to the experience.
L-R:
Our participants were rewarded with a small button as their “prize” where they could record their finishing time.
The initial sketches of the Puzzle Room.
Me during set-up / load-in of Build, before the conference kicked off.
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella in the Puzzle Room
We even had an unexpected visit from Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, and he was delighted with the demonstration. He connected with the vision for the experience and had a great conversation with one of our engineers about how “Mixed Reality is everything, everyone, and everywhere” – proof that our key storytelling goal translated.