Hospitals can feel intimidating, especially to young children visiting for the first time. Nemours Children’s Hospital wanted to make that first impression welcoming and uplifting, greeting patients with an experience that inspired wonder.
Our challenge was to create something that would engage children from toddlers to teenagers. The experience also needed to evolve over time, giving returning patients something new to discover.
As Creative Director at Snibbe Interactive, I led the team that won the project competition and guided the experience from design through installation, creating a 60-foot-wide immersive display that brought fun and social interaction to the hospital lobby.
Our concept was The Living Garden, a gesture responsive panorama in which children and their families grow their own plants by nurturing them to health using interactive rain and sunshine. Guests use their bodies to control virtual shadows that interact with the wall, nurturing the fantasy plants into a blossoming landscape.
The Living Garden is one of the largest immersive displays installed in North America, spanning more than 50-foot wide, 9 foot tall and containing over 93 million pixels. The system uses 6 enterprise level PC’s, 54 LCD screens, and 5 Kinect gesture recognition cameras to track and interpret guest body movements. An immersive audio system plays a repertoire of entertaining sound effects, adding a touch of realism to user interactions. A specially composed musical score adds structure to the fantasy narrative.
The goal of the game is to grow a garden filled with plants, starting from seed-pods that can be caught as they float through the air. Combining seed-pods from different plants creates new species, delighting children with an ever-changing landscape.
A series of depth sensing cameras track guest body movements along the full length of the wall, representing players as “virtual silhouettes”. Guests can use their silhouettes to gather droplets of rain and deflect beams of sunshine, helping the plants grow. The garden is in constant animation - exaggerated and amplified for the entertainment of children and their families.
POPPING PLANT
TRUMPET PLANT
We wanted to make the plants characters in their own right, with personalities expressed through vivid colors, fantastical forms, and most of all - expressive movement. Inspired by time-lapse films of plants wriggling their way towards the sun, we realized the way a plant grows could become a compelling aspect of it’s personality.
Our team was also delighted to work with a group of young patients in a “Creature Creation” workshop at the hospital. Over thirty young patients helped us imagine behaviors children would identify with. Their ideas evolved into a series of character traits, that span bold and cheeky, through to shy and retiring.
POPPING PLANT
TRUMPET PLANT
The cast of characters also help propel the game along, adding new elements and interactive effects the longer children play. Of these, the “Chromakin” proved to be one of the most popular. This flying elf uses his wand to bestow children with the gift of flight, transforming their virtual shadows into flying avatars.
Depth sensing cameras interpret the children’s movements, so their bodies become the interface to control their avatar’s flight. Kids delight in being able to freely fly around the scene, discovering they can now feed the hungry creatures.
POPPING PLANT
TRUMPET PLANT
Our client asked for an experience that always felt new to returning patients. Inspiration came from looking to nature, and thinking about the way real plants evolve through cross pollination. Our solution was “The Seed DNA system”; an automatic method of evolving the Living Garden through guest interactions.
Plants in the Living Garden are able to evolve because their design is generated algorithmically, based on more than 40 different variables. By pushing two floating seeds together, players create a “child” seed that combines the characteristics of its two “parents”. These variables include the plant’s color, number of branches, length of each stem, amount of stem twist, flower design, flower colors, etc.
The new seedling randomly selects which variables will either dominate or take a minor role. As the plant grows, it resembles both parents but develops it’s own characteristics. Over time, as players interact with the seeds and grow more plants, the character of the landscape gently changes, populated by an infinite variety of sprouting plants.
As the project developed and the range of physical interactions grew, we saw an opportunity to make the Living Garden more than an entertaining attraction - incorporating it into the hospital’s physical therapy programs. Our client embraced the idea, so we set to work developing a range of physical interactions purposefully designed to promote healthy movements.
We worked closely with the hospital’s occupational and physical therapists, inviting them to our studio to help prototype accessible movements that all children could participate in. Repeated rounds of user testing helped us to finesse the gestural language, so the technology could recognize the movements and they felt like a good fit with the story. This extra work gave the Living Garden a second purpose - kids were motivated to move their bodies, pleasantly distracted by an immersive game.
POPPING PLANT
TRUMPET PLANT
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The project won a 2015 Gold Product Innovation Award from Healthcare Design.
As Creative Director at Snibbe Interactive, I originated the concept, developed and pitched the winning proposal, and led the visual and interaction design. I managed development, prototyped the experience, and recruited and mentored the design team. Throughout the project, I worked closely with the engineering and installation teams to ensure smooth delivery and a positive client experience.
DESIGN, ENGINEERING AND INSTALLATION TEAMS
Graham Plumb
Nathan Heigert
Sean Monroe
Cliff Mueller
Dogan Demir
Metin Nacar
Dimitri Svistula
Sherri Nevins
David Kreitz
Tristan Schoening
Andrew Schoening
Creative Director
Concept Artist
Production Artist
Character Design
Lead Engineer
Software Engineer
Software Engineer
Software QC
Project Manager
Installation Manager
Installation Engineer
NEMOURS HOSPITAL CLIENT TEAM
Dr. Neil Izenberg
Mike Cluff
Chief Executive
Health Media Director
