Bringing the Gruffalo to life through real-world AR testing

Nexus Studios is a creative studio known for bringing stories and characters to life through animation and immersive technology.

Working with Forestry England, Nexus developed the Gruffalo Spotter app, an augmented reality (AR) experience that allowed children and families to discover characters from the much-loved Gruffalo story while exploring England's forests.

The app brought together digital storytelling and outdoor adventure, encouraging families to interact with characters in the real world.

Testing an adventure beyond the screen

Unlike a typical mobile app, Gruffalo Spotter was designed to be used outdoors, by children and parents moving through woodland environments.

That introduced some unusual testing challenges. The app needed to work across a variety of mobile devices, while the AR experience had to respond to different ways people might hold and use them.

Nexus wanted independent assurance that the app would deliver an enjoyable experience for families visiting the forests.

Bringing the forest into the test lab

We developed an exploratory functional testing approach that reflected how children and parents were likely to interact with the app. Using a broad selection of mobile phones and tablets, our testers explored different devices and operating environments, including those more likely to reveal unexpected behaviour.

We also recreated challenging AR conditions in our test lab, testing from different heights and viewing angles to reflect the perspectives of adults and children.

This combination of functional and compatibility testing helped Nexus identify issues that might otherwise have emerged when families were using the app outdoors.

Want to know more about how we tested the experience? Read AR testing – the wood for the trees for a closer look at the devices, environments and techniques we used.

Ready for families to explore

The Gruffalo Spotter app launched as an interactive experience across Forestry England locations, bringing familiar characters into the forest through augmented reality. By May 2017, the app was available at 26 locations across England.

Our testing gave Nexus greater confidence in the experience before launch, drawing on established testing approaches while adapting them to the unusual demands of an outdoor AR application.

For Nexus, that meant issues could be identified and resolved before families started exploring, supporting a high-quality launch and an enjoyable experience for the people the app was designed for.