Værkampen was developed in collaboration with Scary Weather and as part of the course «Bachelor's Thesis in Media and Interaction Design» in the spring of 2021, by Kristin Eidsheim, Tommy Kojen, Live Aadneram Enevoldsen and Camilla Elise Bakke Hermansen.
Værkampen is a fun and innovative experience based concept, which aims to educate and create engagement about weather and climate. The concept plays on a combination of an application and a physical installation known as «The Weather Machine». Via the application, users, who can be anyone visiting Mount Fløyen, can explore various activities and take on challenges related to weather and climate. By doing these activities, the user collects points which can be registered at The Weather Machine. Registering points at the Weather Machine will lead to a contribution to Værkampen’s current climate commitment, as well as reward the user with coupons.
Scary Weather is a media company that specializes in climate communication. Their tagline is «From facts to stories», which highlights how they work on transforming meteorological facts and numbers into compelling stories with the purpose of creating engagement about the climate. The «problem» that Scary Weather wanted the students to solve is how to connect the prototype they made previously in MIX202 to a new installation that is being built on Mount Fløyen in Bergen. This is because they want to get the project funded as a total experience and not individual products. Thus, the students' task was to find out how they can be able to merge the two concepts into one holistic experience, in a natural and intuitive way, that also is enjoyable for visitors of Fløyen.
With the help of AR-technology, the user is presented with a visualization of a time travel with emphasis on how Bergen is changing and influenced by climate change. The new installation is going to be a «weather machine», and is still in an early development stage, meaning that much of its functionality and visual appearance is unknown. Creating a connection to something which is not yet defined proved to be challenging, but it also meant that their framework and possibilities were quite open and flexible.
You can read the project report here.
Check out the prototype for Værkampen in the link below!
