This STEAM collaborative project is a dynamic five-month venture uniting students and faculty from Cal Poly and Birmingham City University across the disciplines of Liberal Arts, Engineering, Architecture, and Business. The students have embarked on a creative journey to conceive a functioning design for the entrance of the Ocean Sight One project—a walk-through and virtual reality experience that unravels the hidden ecologies of the ocean and their interactions with oil industry infrastructures off the California coast. This transnational team have passed through four phases of design and evaluation, refining their work into a professional concept for an interactive, traveling experience aimed at enlightening visitors of diverse ages and backgrounds.

Ocean Sight One at Innovation Fest …

The immediate goals for each team were to create a unique entrance theme coupled with interactive technology. Their challenge has been to design, build, test, and showcase their proof of concept at the BCU Innovation Fest in May 2024. The fest will witness each team’s output: a scale model, an informative poster, a concise video presentation, a small functioning prototype, and a virtual reality exposition that reveals layers of their design not immediately perceivable in the physical prototype. This immersive, educational project not only focuses on design excellence but also on perfecting remote STEAM collaboration methods, leveraging an international version of Agile project management to orchestrate this ambitious educational endeavour.