For many of us, our most impactful work happens in the most understated spaces—libraries, study halls, our bedrooms. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but we wanted to see blooming plants bring life and energy to these spaces—without the real-life responsibility of plant parenting.
Just like the natural process the app is named after, we realized our MR garden could bring life and energy to our goals as well if it gives us a chance to document, visualize, and celebrate our accomplishments while feeling like a game!
Photosynthespace is a Mixed Reality (MR) gardening simulation that allows you to identify surfaces in a room and cultivate virtual plants on them as a tool for goal setting and progress tracking.
Each plant sown by you represents a goal or habit of your description. You can input your own steps or let the plant generate a step-by-step plan. View these roadmaps as you select the plant, and watering these plants is the equivalent of checking off a step on the list. Watch these little guys grow as you water them more and more! If you encounter a problem with completing any steps of your goals (a.k.a. your "plants" 😉), you can talk to them directly via a voice-to-text conversation. A tailored rubber ducky plant-y will help navigate your issues with personalized guidance.
Finally, take your headset anywhere and manage your garden and goals in any space. Meditate, cultivate, relax, and enjoy the cute visuals and music.
We believe in retaining the essence of your space and simply revealing the progress that's often hidden. This hopefully fortifies the vital skill of appreciating your achievements, no matter how big or small. At the end of the day, you grew them with care, just like a plant.
Traditionally, XR is used to transport you to a new environment, but Photosynthespace transforms your environment into a representation of you and your efforts!
Photosynthespace is built with:
Unity, connected to a Meta Quest 3. Voiceflow, which interprets the user's requests and concerns to generate conversation responses and steps to achieving a goal. AWS for cloud services.
Spatial mapping Flowers spawning out of control Integrating Voiceflow into Unity
Creating a proof-of-concept for an idea that we would personally use! Persevering through bugs and mental breakdowns.
XR development at this scale is best with two of the SAME headset available (we only had one compatible). Sometimes starting over from scratch is a breath of fresh air, allowing us to make it to the end on the second try!
Procedural generation to create a unique plant for every goal. Its growth processes will also look smoother. Create our own plant, sound, and music assets. As XR devices become more accessible in hardware and software, our app will become even more intuitive—imagine sticking plants to walls and turning the spray bottle into a watering can!