Within our research, we found that Henry Hornbostel, the architect who designed Carnegie Mellon Campus mall area, wanted to have the layout mimic an explorers ship. Each building that represents a field of study adds to the function of moving the ship forward towards a brighter future. We thought this metaphor would be a great basis for our concept, and wanted to incorporate a collective aspect to the experience.
Another approach was to gamify the experience to achieve a sense of accomplishment. For games such as Sky Children of Light, the player is able to collect candle lights by exploring the map to use as currency for artifacts that they want to exchange for. This structure exists very naturally and gives freedom to how the user wants to accomplish certain tasks. But in order to understand what the correct "task" is, people need a guide that can give directions and rewards. They can be stationary or mobile based on what the player needs assistance with, so we decided to establish the specific tasks that the user will need to complete through mock-up frames and diagrams.
