Wol: Guide to the Redwoods

Role: Writer, Conversation Designer ≈ Clients: Liquid City, Niantic Games

As a writer and conversation designer I developed the curriculum for this experience (the lifecycle of a redwood tree), designed Wol’s personality, core knowledge/set of facts, affect, idioms and conversational style. For the conversation design aspect of this project I was using Inworld.

Wol is your lovable guide to the redwood forest. Wol is a mixed reality experience from Niantic which features a Northern Saw-whet owl who has lived in the redwood forest for their entire life. Wol joins you in your space through an AR portal which opens a door to the redwood forest. As an AI-enabled owl, Wol is ready to have a natural conversation with you about the plants on the forest floor, the lifecycle of a tree and the creatures of the forest.

While Wol can be engaged with on iOS and Android smartphones, it was optimized for use on the Meta Quest Pro which blends your physical and virtual environment together with full-color mixed reality passthrough. Leveraging the room setup feature on Quest, the Wol experience understands where the walls and surfaces are within your room and uses them to transform your space into the redwood forest. Watch as ferns and mushrooms grow on the surfaces in your room around you and gaze up at the magnificence of the redwood forest though the AR portal which has replaced one of your walls. Once Wol flies into your space, you can talk to them to learn about the forest ecosystem, ask them to tell jokes and stories of their life, or even get Wol to sing you some of their favorite songs. The addition of hand tracking to pet Wol and spatial audio adds further realism to this experience. When your visit comes to an end, Wol will fly back into the redwood forest until you return for another conversation.

“We are excited to explore how XR and AI can combine to enable new ways of learning. You can visit Wol just by clicking a link - your living room will transform into the redwood forest, whether you’re on mobile or headset. It’s a really simple and approachable way to learn about the forest ecosystem, with a lot of depth and character.” - Keiichi Matsuda