Image Credit: Biayna Bogosian, Akshit Nassa
SIGGRAPH 2024 Appy Hour contribution “Balboa Park Alive!” is an innovative AR mobile app that brings San Diego’s Balboa Park to life by offering immersive, interactive experiences focused in the area’s rich biodiversity. Aimed at families, the app promotes environmental stewardship and conservation through engaging activities like cultivating native plants, releasing butterflies, and simulating pollinator behavior. Hear from the team behind this innovation.
SIGGRAPH: What inspired the creation of the “Balboa Park Alive!” app, and how does it aim to enhance park-goers’ connection to local biodiversity?
The invisible threads of our natural world — the ultraviolet signals guiding pollinators, the chemical messages between plants, the microscopic relationships sustaining entire ecosystems — shape life in profound ways we cannot see. After all, we cannot empathize with that which we cannot imagine; we cannot protect that which we cannot name. Location-based augmented reality (AR) offers a powerful lens to reveal these hidden dimensions of nature, making the invisible visible and transforming human perception of ecological reality.
In the San Diego/Tijuana region, which stands at a remarkable crossroads of distinct ecoregions, one of Earth’s richest concentrations of biodiversity thrives, yet many young people — particularly those in underserved communities with limited access to green spaces — remain unfamiliar with the plants, animals, insects, and fungi that make life here vibrantly possible. “Balboa Park Alive!” seeks to reveal these invisible dimensions of our local ecosystem through an engaging mobile AR experience, making abstract ecological relationships tangible and immediate for visitors.
Drawing inspiration from Prof. Scott Fisher’s pioneering work in outdoor spatial computing — which focused on empowering users to author and access location-based virtual content in unstructured environments — we leveraged Niantic’s Lightship ARDK framework, Mapbox SDK, Visual Positioning System (VPS), and MediaPipe Hands for natural interaction, creating precise AR experiences that encourage families to discover local flora and fauna.
“Balboa Park Alive!” seeks to bridge this gap through three key approaches: First, by fostering perspective-taking, imagination, and curiosity. Users experience life through a pollinator’s perspective — following a honeybee’s waggle dance navigation and viewing the world in the ultraviolet hues that attract bees and butterflies. The app encourages inquiry-based learning, inviting users to experiment with how different plant species might survive across riparian, oasis, desert, and coastal ecosystems.
Second, by promoting ecological literacy through a combination of direct experience and in-depth content. The app features companion book chapters accessible through the interface, creating a novel approach to environmental education. While traditional learning involves integrating text-based information with existing knowledge, “Balboa Park Alive!” adds the dimension of direct personal experience. Through AR-based prompts and immersive content, users can map concepts from the text to their firsthand observations, potentially creating deeper emotional connections than possible through printed material alone.
Third, by offering a shared activity that motivates conversation and outdoor exploration for adults and children. Through the app’s collaborative features and interactive AR experiences, families engage together in discovering and understanding local biodiversity. This shared exploration creates natural opportunities for intergenerational learning and discussion about the environment, fostering a deeper connection to nature through social interaction.
SIGGRAPH: How do the interactive activities within the app, like cultivating native plants or simulating pollinator behavior, help educate users about environmental stewardship?
Through carefully designed interactive experiences, our app brings local biodiversity to life in meaningful ways. For instance, users can learn about the endangered San Diego mesa mint, a plant that depends on vernal pools and exists only in a few isolated locations in our region. The app’s AR experiences let users see through pollinators’ eyes and follow their flight paths, creating an intimate connection with these crucial ecosystem participants. By physically enacting these ecological relationships within the park environment, surrounded by native plants and insects, users develop a deeper appreciation for our interconnected ecosystem. These embodied experiences are designed to inspire support for local conservation efforts.
SIGGRAPH: What kind of feedback have you received from families using the app, and how has it impacted conservation and environmental stewardship?
Our preliminary user testing has revealed encouraging results. Families have shown genuine curiosity and enthusiasm, particularly responding to the visualizations and the novel ability to “touch” virtual insects. We’ve observed that the app’s games often serve as a bridge to deeper engagement with the surrounding natural environment. For example, during the pollinator matching experience in the Zoro pollinator garden, children frequently transition from exploring the app to investigating real leaves, rocks, Moreton Bay figs, and other physical elements of their environment.
One particularly memorable moment involved a young child who became so captivated by watching a virtual bee flying in waggle formation around his palm that he exclaimed, “A bee! I want to find some!” He then eagerly explored nearby bushes, pointing out real bees on branches. This led to a rich conversation with his parents about a camouflaged butterfly he had recently seen at preschool.
These types of interactions align perfectly with our goals. Research shows that conversations with caregivers play a crucial role in children’s development of STEM practices and concepts. By getting families outdoors exploring their natural environment and engaging in meaningful discussions, we believe we’re taking an important step toward cultivating lifelong curiosity and empathy for the plants and animals of the San Diego region, ultimately inspiring action in support of conservation.
Submit your innovative app to SIGGRAPH 2025. Appy Hour submissions are open until 18 February 2025.
Ying Choon Wu is an assistant research scientist at the Institute for Neural Computation at UC San Diego. She has worked extensively with augmented, virtual, and mixed reality to study higher order human cognition and behavior, including awe, teamwork, visual search, and computational concept learning.
Biayna Bogosian is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University’s Media and Immersive Experience Center, with joint appointments in the Design School and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. Trained as an architectural technologist and immersive media designer, her research spans spatial computing, robotics, material systems, and innovative learning platforms to advance resilience in the built environment.
Patrick Coleman is a writer and creative developer of books, games and experiences. His projects include The Churchgoer (novel), Fire Season (poetry/art), and Nature Kin (card game), among others. For eight years, he was the Assistant Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego.
Daniel Jalali is a senior computer science student at FIU with over three years of experience in AR/VR game development. He focuses on research in immersive technologies and is a lead developer for the Pandora Project at ASU, contributing to innovative advancements in virtual environments.
Akshit Nassa is a UX Engineer with several years of experience in applied research, designing and developing scalable products, user interfaces, and interactive experiences. Graduated from ASU’s MS in Human-Computer Interaction in 2024, he has contributed to various consumer platforms across industries such as AR/VR design, mobile computing, and tactile internet technologies.
