Health Royale
Gamifying Health Info for Interactive Edutainment
Experiences
Collaborators
- The Clay Center’s Avampato Discovery Museum
Project Overview
The Clay Center’s Avampato Discovery Museum houses three floors of hands-on discovery exhibits and was once home to Health Royale, a play on tic-tac-toe with a medical twist, for over twenty years. The museum wanted an engaging exhibit that was able to deliver a large amount of health information to audiences of all ages. Working with the museum designers, LF Studios developed Health Royale, a fully autonomous and repeatable interactive exhibit based on the classic Hollywood Squares game show
Design Approach
Without a live operator to rely on, the exhibit had to replicate the game show experience in an immersive, compelling way. To entertain a group of visitors such as a family or a class field trip, there had to be multiple shows without repetitive content so back-to-back interactions with Health Royale would stay fresh and fun. Just like the Hollywood Squares game show, the design of each square’s “actor” had to be entertaining enough to hold your attention while being tied back to the health-based content.
What We Built
LF Studios sculpted the figures and mapped precise movements to give each body part a unique personality through squinting, eyebrow waggling, and the other distinct body movements that brought the figures to life.
Queen Intestine, Hot Lips, Mr. Pee, Coach Heart, Funny Bone, Elvis the Pelvis, Slim Pick-It, The Brain, and Mrs. Lung filled the 13-foot-tall tic-tac-toe game structure while host Skully stood off to the side to keep things rolling. Touchscreens allowed one or two players to play the game, while audience seating behind them fit up to 100 people to watch the show. Wisecracking, bantering, and health facts tied to each character’s design kept the crowd entertained, the game moving along, and the immersion believable to repeat visitors.
Our Breakthrough
Believability of the show was essential or audiences would quickly lose interest. To achieve the excitement of a gameshow experience, over 130 minutes of show content (across 10 figures) was programmed and instantly accessible depending on visitor inputs, or lack thereof. Six control systems synchronized 150 different control points, including 12 channels of audio, show lighting, and special effects. Questions and banter were shuffled for each game, while aging algorithms kept them from being reused too quickly.
Results
An innovation in interactive experiences, Health Royale compelled visitor interaction with fun characters, realistic playful dialogue and game show excitement that communicated important health advice for decades.
