Cast a Spell
To help Chinese language learners to memorize acronym-like Chinese four-character idioms - chéngyǔ, I designed and developed an augmented reality mobile game that combined situated learning, dual coding, active learning, and social learning to promote effective encoding and retrieving.
Individual Project
Features
GPS tracking | 3D Modeling | Animation | Speech Recognition | Geotagging | Video Editing
Tool: Unity | Maya | Adobe Premiere
Chengyu are condensed expressions with rich meanings and stories behind them, so that learners feel hard to memorize them, like memorizing acronyms and abbreviations. This AR game can overlay the backstories or animated visual cues of chengyu in the environment, to link the words to the context of using. Learners will easily remember the short-forms of these big ideas. It helps to build learners’ mental models of each chengyu.
Chengyu is also difficult to use correctly because they convey very specific meanings in specific contexts. Some people don’t even remember to use them. The social interaction of this AR game aims to engage learners to find the right place to use chengyu.
Storyboard
Background knowledge about the 3 sample objects
爱(Aì)屋(Wū)及(Jí)乌(Wū) means “love for a person extends even to the crows on his roof”, literally translated as “love the house to the crow”, equivalent to “love me, love my dog” in English.
对(Duì)牛(Niú)弹(Tán)琴(Qín) means someone chose the wrong audience, literally translated as “play lute to a cow”, equivalent to “cast pearls before swine” in English.
人(Rén)山(Shān)人(Rén)海(Hǎi) means this place is packed, literally translated as “People mountain people sea”.
