A personal social video, done to highlight a new interactive Google Experiment.

Videography, sound design, and editing are all original.

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Work Type: Personal Project

PROJECT BACKGROUND

If you aren’t already familiar with it, you should check out Google Experiments. It's a platform that showcases interesting tools, resources, and projects that have been created by coders—all using Chrome, Android, AI, Web VR, AR, and more. The goal is to explore how creative tools can be made more accessible for everyone.

One such experiment was Lightsaber Escape, by Disney, Lucasfilm, and Unit 9. They created a Chrome web browser game that you could control using your mobile phone.

The setup was brilliantly simple—all you had to do was visit a website on your phone, where Google would detect gyroscope inputs as you moved your device around. Concurrently, you open a website on your desktop, which reads those inputs over the internet—allowing you to play the game.

The genius of the idea is that you don’t need to install anything, and you don’t need to download a separate app (which is a huge engagement barrier, because people hate to install new apps). All you need to do is visit the website on both your computer and your phone. Your phone becomes the controller, and your desktop becomes your TV.

Screenshots courtesy of Google Experiments.

Being the geek I am, I loved every second of this thing. And after messing around with it (for much too long, I’m sure), I noticed that most people hadn’t heard of it, despite them being Star Wars fans. So I decided to make a quick post about it on Instagram. I always like when creative ideas get as much recognition as they can.

15 seconds later, I had a sweet and short video showing off this wicked project. It combined a culturally relevent topic (Star Wars, which just had a new movie released), a creative interactive idea, and some clever coding. What’s not to love?