The original idea came from the Oyster card’s name, which may be related to Shakespeare’s ‘The world is your oyster. The metaphor behinds the ‘oyster’ really triggered me to think about the virtual world. From this basic concept, I’d like to go ahead to express the endless possibilities from the ‘Virtual Underworld’.

 

When I designed this experience, I mainly focused on how AR, as a unique medium, is interactive with the audiences. So naturally, because of the underground topic, I started cracking on how to link up the real-world Oyster Card with the virtual world. But when I think about the diversity of the London Underground, the inspirations around the contrast between traditional - modern, real - virtual, start - end, above the ground - the underworld made me very excited. 

 

I soon started thinking about making the Underground look underground in the AR world. To create a virtual underground world, not just display like an underground, but also when you move around, it should feel like the object is under the surface. These feelings are vital to my topic and very interesting to me, which pushed me to make the first scene by animating the letters on the Oyster card and using ‘O’ to smash out and reveal the under virtual world. But, soon I realised that this was too simple and boring. So, I would like to explore some new opportunities to make the experience more enjoyable. For example, why not make the iPad see the virtual AR world within the screen. 

 

Meanwhile, create a larger underground virtual world, making the physical oyster card become a movable magic window to reveal what’s under the floor structures. If I can implement this function, it will perfectly fit in with my topics. This is in line with common sense that the underground cannot be seen in the real world straight away, using the argument reality technology blending my virtual world and the real world by a perfect AR medium - oyster card. Since this card also has the same function to get access to the real world underground. 

 

At last, I would like to have a complete journey from start to the end/destination by letting the audience control the character following the tube journey. The freedom of this control is the essential part of interaction with the audience, too, also coherence with my theme of typical Londoner’s daily routine.