Webby Winner
✨
AdFest Winner
✨
ADC Winner
✨
And more!
✨
Webby Winner ✨ AdFest Winner ✨ ADC Winner ✨ And more! ✨
Ranger Buddies Quest
Client
Mandai Wildlife Reserve,
Singapore Zoo
Year
2021–2023
Scope
Product, Experiential, Integrated Experiences, Innovation
Partners
Pico Singapore, IRMS
TL;DR
We invented a first-of-its-kind interactive binoculars to create an immersive experience for children at the zoo. Over 25 months in the making, we’ve since picked up 16 awards and shortlists globally in categories like experiential, gaming, and innovation.
Co-creative lead managing four work streams running concurrently · Main creative leading concepts and discussions · UX designer for all three products: binoculars, standalone structures at the zoo, and mobile app · Main client-facing creative, led overall creative presentations as well as for the UX work
Context
A tireless champion of conservation efforts, our clients at Mandai Wildlife Reserve wanted to create an experience that brings children out of their homes and into the physical world. Rather than choosing to fight the digitalisation of our Gen-Alphas, we embraced the challenge of melding the digital world with the physical one all while raising the next generation of conservation warriors.
Besides, changing a physical experience is difficult, but adding a layer of digital experience that enhances it is less so.
Role
This project is the longest one I’ve worked on in my career so far, spanning from 2021 to 2023.
In this project, I worked as the co-creative lead and as an UX designer.
Along side my creative director, Daniel, we led four work streams that had to be running concurrently: user interface (UI) design, user experience (UX) design, technology, and content writing.
I also worked as a UX designer along with the rest of the team of 4–5 designers.
As the creative, I had the privilege of leading presentations and client discussions on top of conceptualising and bridging all experiences with each other.
In total we had an expansive team of more than 35 people across the project in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hilversum, and Amsterdam.
Smart Binoculars
Players pick up their tool into the world of Ranger Buddies, a first-of-its-kind interactive binoculars. This allows them to observe the world around them and start their mission.
User flow
Companion App
After selecting the learning mission of the day, Ranger Buddies navigate through the park with prompts from the binoculars, solving quizzes along the way. Parents also take part in their progress on the accompanying app.
Outposts & Bespoke Games
Players dock their Smart Binoculars to play 40 mission games from 10 outpost around the Wildlife Reserve and learn of animals behaviour and survival instincts.
Be a Ranger Buddy
On completing the mission, they are rewarded with physical and digital badges. The lessons and play in the Wildlife reserve brings children closer to be conversationist of the future.
Process
After winning the pitch, we teamed up with our partners at Pico to do a prototype test with a toy binoculars and a flip card mounted on top of it. Held at the zoo, we recruited children of our staff to test out the concept.
Starting at mission one at the Singapore Zoo, we started by updating details of the experience from our pitch process. The core of the experience, the binoculars, went through rounds of iterations in the beginning to grasp how it should work. We went from a slot-in shell to one with the full works with touch screen, sound, and purchase-ready, but ultimately decided on a classic D-Pad binoculars, rentable at the zoo.
Our tech director René, along with our experiential designer Alireza, designed and created the binoculars, with our tech director tinkering, soldering, 3D printing the binoculars right in our office for us to prototype and sense check its design.
Process
As the UI team began on creating a visual identity and later the beautiful designs for the project, the UX team began designing up the flow process and then the wireframes for each device.
Together as a team across UX, tech, and content, we brainstormed on the kind of games we can play on the binoculars. In its first iteration, we had ambition on dialogue between our main characters à la Pokemon, complex games such as a maze, puzzle unscrambler, etc. We quickly learned that we were too ambitious.
Designing for such a massive project meant that we needed to be smart. Games needed to be templated and reusable, regardless of device. This meant that UX and tech needed to work closely together to avoid proposing games that were one-off.
Early wireframes for the app
Early brainstorm for games on binoculars
Early brainstorm for games on binoculars
UX/UI for mobile app
UX/UI for binoculars
UX/UI for outposts
Process
Our content team, along with our partners at Pico, worked closely with our clients and their in-house scientists. Making sure every piece of content and illustration that goes out is educational, accurate and never paints animals in a negative or stereotypical way.
Points taken into consideration within the creative team are the likes of the experience of a child vs their guardians, balancing of screen time vs being present at the zoo, rewards and tiered play for different age groups, etc. We explore the roles of each device for its end-users. For the parents the mobile app, and for the children the binoculars and touch-screen structures at the zoo known as outposts.
We also explored the gameplay rules, eventually arriving at a completion of any three out of the six activities to be granted a physical badge as a reward.
Final output
The mobile app
Add child profiles.
Avatar customisation for children that follows them throughout their play, like showing up on the outposts.
Scan and pair binoculars with QR code scan.
Start or end mission.
Keep track of the progress of each child in their party.
A map that highlights their points of interest.
Activity hints with featured animals, images of what to look out for, and instructions to guide the children as well as a pointers for parents enhance learning.
Journal to capture post-play reflection.
The outposts
Unique structures placed strategically around the parks.
Fabricated to fit the theme of Ranger Buddies Quest.
Contains at least two screens and docking points to reduce wait times.
Reachable screens that come in two heights so children of all heights are comfortable playing.
Contains free games that also acts as a way-in to entice children to test it out and rent our binoculars.
Interactive touchscreens with simple, clear instructions for young children.
Some are fitted with Kinect to allow for different types of game play.
As an example, one mission teaches children how animals communicate with each other. A game task children to create an orchestra to learn how animals sound, another gets them to pose like various animals to learn body language.
The binoculars
Only 400 grams
Reachable buttons for the smallest of hands
10 hours battery life
Drop-proof and waterproof.
A functioning binoculars with 4x or 10x zoom for analog way-finding.
Includes GPS and bluetooth.
Challenges
Designing for children meant that there were a lot of considerations to be made. From the hand distancing on the D-Pad, the height of the outposts on-ground at the zoo, the language and gameplay all needed to cater to our specific audience, yet varied enough for the the older kids to derive enough difficulty from.
As our clients are part of the government and an educational institution, all works were vetted very clearly to ensure that every animal is depicted accurately. From it’s fangs, how it moves its ears, how they congregate in flocks or not, even down to the flora and fauna depicted—Only local vegetation allowed. Not even the South American monstera is allowed into our design as they are from to a different type of rainforest from our tropical one!
Because we were designing for three devices, it was essential that the experience all lined up, from the loading screen on the binoculars as the mobile phone was pairing to it, live progress updates on the app as the children play on their binoculars to instant recognition when a binoculars is docked on the outpost.
Our team sits across Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hilversum, and Amsterdam and because of that, the moving parts added complexity in communication across teams, timezones and cultures although this element is very much integrated into the Monks DNA.
Outcome
After 25 months of research, 12 different binocular prototypes, and 20,000 hours of development, we successfully turned Singapore Zoo into 28 hectares of digital playground.
Since then, we gone live and have launched multiple missions across the Singapore Zoo and the River Wonders with 15 interactive outposts, 30 mission games with over 2000 Ranger Buddies in just a month at launch.
ADC
ADC Annual Awards Merit for Gaming - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
AdFest
Bronze Lotus for Mobile Games - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
Campaign Asia-Pacific
Event Marketing Awards Bronze for Best Gamification - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
MAD STARS
Bronze for Innovation - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
Crystal for Games / Branded Tech - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
Crystal for Interactive Craft - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
Marketing Interactive
MARKies Awards Silver for Cause Marketing - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
MARKies Awards Silver for Most Creative: Digital - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
MARKies Awards Silver for Most Creative: Experiential - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
MARKies Awards Silver for Most Creative: Gamification - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
New York Festivals
Bronze for Innovation - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
Finalist for Package and Product Design: Best Use Innovation
Finalist for Avant Garde: Innovation
Spikes
Shortlist for Brand Experience & Activation
Shortlist for Digital Craft
Shortlist for Innovation
Webby Awards
People's Voice Winner - Mandai Wildlife Reserve “Ranger Buddies Quest”
Nominee for Apps & Software Education, Science & Reference
Reflection
Designing for three devices across all team capabilities was painful to manage. There was difficulty staying updated across all teams and that job fell on me and my creative director as we split time across stand-ups, conveying messages, updating key documents and decks.
A few months in, I realised that I can’t sit in every meeting before delegating some of that to the project manager and producers as well as regrouping only with key personnel from each team.
We started off bright-eyed with idealistic dreams of customised games and CPU-level interactions. We were quickly brought back down to earth. On hindsight, we waited too long to go into pilot when we should’ve broken it up by iterating and testing way more than we did.
I absolutely loved working with my key clients who were nothing but receptive, collaborative, and knowledgeable in their quest to educate. Every site-visit the zoo was filled with learning and gaining a new appreciation for the work done by the Mandai Wildlife Reserve. I still keep in touch with said clients to this day!
Because of this project, I worked with so many talented and lovely Monks in the Hilversum office and became fast friends with some of them. I specially travelled to The Netherlands to work remote in the summer of 2024 to meet some of the Monks I’ve gotten to know in the 5+ years since I’ve been here, and took the opportunity to give a talk and to showoff the binoculars we worked on. Often times working for other offices meant that you wouldn’t get a chance to see it in-person but I was lucky enough to be able to bring it to them instead!
Although the project was long and often arduous, it brought so much joy to me meeting so many talented and lovely people. This includes the Monks, the clients, the random children we play-tested with at the zoo, stories of my friends’ children playing it at the zoo, and of course the happy children I don’t know about playing it at the zoo right now!
Credit
Agency
Monks in Singapore, Hilversum, Kuala Lumpur
Directors
Daniel Samson, Creative Director
Mus Zainal, Creative Director, APAC
Patricio Lobos, Creative Director
Dave Rhodes, Design Director
Creatives
Kayla Chia, Senior Creative & UX
Mariane Barlaan, Creative
Joanna Lim, Creative
Designers
Jasmie Ezran, Senior UI Designer
Delano Kamp, Senior UX Designer
Khin Thapyay, UX Designer
Vanessa Lim, Senior UI Designer
Yizhen Huang, Senior UI Designer
Bryan Sng, Game Designer
Keith Tang, Senior UX Designer
Alireza Sadeh, Experiential Designer
Anna Dohy, Game Designer
Emma Gilpin, Experience Designer
Copywriters
Lyla Murugayah, Senior Copywriter
Rebecca Harbick, Copywriter
Illustrators and Animators
Vanessa Law, Lead Animator
Lucia Sordelli, Illustrator
Lynne Goh, Senior Illustrator
Ying Wen Ang, Illustrator
Hidayah Surasa, Illustrator
Kevin Rooi, Junior Illustrator
Tech and Development
René Bokhorst, Technical Director
Tze-Wei Ong, Lead Developer
Paulyn Pelayo, Lead Unity Developer
Martin Koning, Unity Developer
Producers and Project Management
Paco Velayo, Senior Project Manager
Nicole Goh, Senior Producer
Tianwei Wang, Senior Producer
Alvaro Sanchez, Executive Producer
Andy Soh, Senior Project Manager
Contributors
Bobby Tay, Design Director
Rachel Xu, Creative Director
AS Anam, Creative Director
