Three Rooms at AYA Universe Dubai

Lorenzo Venturini used Notch to produce interactive solutions for three separate and wholly singular rooms at AYA Universe in Wafi City, Dubai.

Dubai’s AYA Universe is an immersive experience park depicting an imaginary planet inhabited by alien creatures through twelve unique rooms. First, a room called The Source tells the story of the birth of said creatures in the building’s central dome; later, The River displays the planet’s biomes and natural forces through an interactive floor; finally, Outland shows the creatures taking shape in a journey through different seasons.

Notch Designer Lorenzo Venturini started by analysing mood boards to create a level of interactivity appropriate for what the other designers involved had created. In The Source and The River, he used depth sensors to generate and manage TUIO points to track visitors. He also made creature avatars for Outland and tracked them in real time with ZED Camera sensors positioned in a double wall.

Notch allowed the team to quickly create widely varying proposals and find ways to adapt to onsite changes. As Venturini described, “For a project as ambitious as this, it was important to have many alternative ways to connect the graphics we’d previously designed to the different sensors. Notch gave us a lot of options.”

The team used Pandoras Box media servers to play and manage all content throughout the museum, which continues to attract visitors ready to experience and document it with its over 150,000 followers on social media. The experience is poised to be one of the most innovative of its kind for years to come.