Julia Margreta Wetterdal

A fun, simple & innovative Puzzle Hunt to help boost engagement at CicLAvias street event and motivate on-goers to interact more with the different sponsor booths located throughout the route.

CicLAvia is a nonprofit, car-free streets initiative where the organization temporarily closes streets to motor vehicles to make them accessible & encourage people to transform their relationship with the community. The problem is that many people see the event as a bike race only & does not often take the time to engage and interact more with the thing around them during the event.

Interactivity boosts engagement - People like to interact with things around them which form a level of involvement and connection that automatically leads to authentic engagement. Smaller sponsor booths were not getting as much engagement as the larger, more established sponsors.

Our solution is a Puzzle Hunt where all pieces of the puzzle would be divided amongst selected sponsors throughout the route and collected by the on-goers passing by, which could strategically draw attendees to lesser-known booths creating a route-long interaction and providing them with a meaningful experience.

A physical wallet to use during & after the visit to Meow Wolf's Convergence Station that embraces the experience. The wallet includes an interactive and customizable function that allows users to solve puzzles to unlock immersive AR features in the app.

Meow Wolf's Convergence Station, located in Denver, is an immersive art exhibit that transports people into a new world through art, exploration, and play. Users work to solve the mysterious story by searching for clues and interacting with the exhibit. Visitors tend to only scratch the surface of the exhibit's narrative by physically being there. However, there are a lot of possibilities for extending the narrative after they complete their visit by tying their purchases from the gift shop to extended/alternative storylines.

During the research phase of this project, we discovered that Meow Wolf has an extremely wide demographic of users. People travel to the exhibit from all different ages and backgrounds. However, one thing we did find in common is the fan's love for puzzles. Many hard-core Meow Wolf lovers are still trying to solve the story, even after multiple visits to Convergence Station. Additionally, We discovered that this is something that also frustrates first-time visitors. Therefore, our team needed to find a way for users to collect clues and continue solving the story outside the exhibit.

Based on our research, we conceptualized an interactive wallet that can be purchased before, during, or after the Meow Wolf experience. This wallet not only provides many great benefits for the visitors during the experience, such as collecting clues, scanning QR codes, and writing down notes, but it will also allow the visitors to enter the multiverse and continue their journey after the physical experience through the app provided with their wallet. ​ The app contains many great features, such as allowing visitors to capture AR creatures with their camera lens during the exhibit. However, many creatures can only be visible if the user solves a puzzle sent from the app by moving adjustable pieces on the wallet into the correct position. Additionally, inside the app, visitors can view their collected memories from the exhibit, interact, explore, and relive their Meow wolf experience.