At the Digital Society School, creative technologists are encouraged to experiment with new tools and technologies. In this spirit, a colleague and I organised Creative Tech Jam Week, a week-long initiative designed to foster rapid learning and innovation. Each participant selected a technology to explore and developed a project from scratch using that tool.
For my project, I chose VR development with Unity, building on my previous training and using this opportunity to expand my skills in Unity and 3D application development.
The week was structured to maximise collaboration, inspiration, and creativity. We used a Kanban board to organise tasks, held daily stand-ups to plan our work, and ended each day with demonstrations to share progress and collect feedback. Collaboration played a key role, allowing us to learn from one another and continuously improve our projects throughout the week.
The project followed two main requirements:
I decided to recreate the recycling system at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, where confusion often occurred despite the bin labels. To address this, I developed a playful, interactive VR experience designed to teach users how to sort waste correctly according to that system.
The prototype replicated the Digital Society School’s clubhouse in 3D, allowing users to explore the space they are already familiar with, collect scattered waste, and sort it into the correct bins in the kitchen. Turning here the recycling activity into a hands-on experience.
By the end of the week, I had developed a functional VR prototype testable on the Oculus Quest 2, which met the project goals and gave me my first opportunity to explore Unity’s potential for Extended Reality (XR) development.
DSS clubhouse picture
WIP of the VR version