MoViT
by Sean Archie Urriza RGD
“Our university had a partnership with the municipality of Pangil, Laguna, and as part of that partnership, three groups were each assigned to help promote the Panguil River Eco-Park. One group built a website. One group built a game. I proposed the virtual tour. At the time I was completing two programs simultaneously, a BS in Information Technology and a Diploma in Digital Arts and Design, and my thesis felt like the right moment to finally bring both of those disciplines together into a single piece of work. The IT foundation gave me the technical capability to develop the 3D environment and the mobile application. The Digital Arts and Design foundation gave me the language to think about immersion, spatial experience, and what it actually feels like to be somewhere. Neither discipline alone would have produced MoViT. It had to be both. That project taught me that the most responsible design decisions are the ones grounded in research rather than instinct, and that standard, of holding your own work accountable to something outside your personal judgment, is exactly what drew me to pursue RGD certification. The designation is the professional expression of a practice I first discovered trying to help a community in Laguna be seen by the rest of the world. And practically speaking, having the RGD designation matters deeply to my career here in Canada. It signals to employers, collaborators, and clients that my practice has been evaluated against a national professional standard, not just a portfolio they have to take my word for. In a competitive market like Calgary, that credibility opens doors that would otherwise stay closed, and it gives me a foundation to grow from that I can carry forward for the rest of my career.”
Sean Archie Urriza RGD
Panguil River Eco-Park in Pangil, Laguna, Philippines, is a remote eco-tourism destination whose physical inaccessibility created a significant digital visibility problem. Potential visitors had no immersive way to evaluate the park before committing to travel; existing materials were limited to brochures and blogs, which provided only general information and left visitors with considerable uncertainty about what to expect. This uncertainty was a documented barrier to tourism decision-making. The park was also an important source of income for the municipality of Pangil, meaning its limited digital presence had direct economic consequences for the community.
The goal was to develop MoViT, a 3D mobile virtual reality application for iOS, that would allow visitors and potential visitors to experience the eco-park digitally before making the journey. Specific objectives were to create a navigable 3D virtual environment of the park's key points of interest (including the Administration Office, Tourist Police Station, Hanging Bridge, Swimming Pool, Cottages, Camping Sites, Pavilion, Biak-na-Bato, and Ambon-Ambon Falls); provide an auditory experience replicating the park's natural sounds; and guide users through the environment towards their selected destinations.
The design process was grounded in three established frameworks. The System Design by Shao, Yu, and Meng (2013) structured the development lifecycle across eight stages: story conception, concept scripting, feasibility analysis, script writing, system evaluation, revision, integration, and system operation. Krueger's Three I's of VR (Immersion, Interaction, and Imagination) defined the experiential qualities the application needed to achieve. Horan's Virtual Reality Model (1997) provided nine design factors as evaluation criteria: Attractiveness, Background Sounds, Customizability, Diffusability, Interactivity, Navigation, Quality of Scenes, Speed of Scene Movement, and Text Description. Every design decision was tested against all nine factors throughout development.
Platform selection was a research-driven decision. StatCounter data confirmed iOS held the majority of tablet market share in the Philippines for 2014-2015, making iPad the platform with the greatest reach among the target audience.
Structured research was conducted with three stakeholder groups whose distinct relationships to the park informed separate evaluation criteria. Staff provided authoritative assessment of route accuracy and representational correctness. Visitors evaluated immersive fidelity against direct experience of the real environment. Potential Visitors, the primary target audience, evaluated whether the application generated sufficient motivation and confidence to visit in real life. These three archetypes were maintained as separate analytical categories throughout usability testing, recognizing that a single evaluation instrument would have obscured meaningful differences in user needs and priorities.
Script writing, the core design phase, was structured across three stages. The Behaviour Module Design phase defined navigation architecture and user interaction patterns. The central challenge was balancing freedom with orientation: the application needed to allow users to roam freely to support immersion, while providing sufficient guidance to help them locate points of interest. Contextual navigational waypoints were developed as the solution, surfacing destinations without constraining exploration. The Multimedia Creation phase covered 3D environment modelling, sound design, and visual asset production. Every structure was modelled to match the actual park, with natural ambient sound incorporated to trigger Krueger's Immersion criterion through auditory simulation. The Model Construction phase assembled the complete iOS application, integrating the 3D environment, navigation system, minimap, compass, and in-environment directional signage into a unified navigable experience.
On-site usability testing was conducted at Panguil River Eco-Park on February 25, 2014. A 5-point Likert scale measured performance across four dimensions: Visual Aesthetics, Interactivity, Sensory Simulation, and Navigation. Staff were evaluated separately on navigation accuracy given their authoritative knowledge of the park layout. Results were computed as category means across all three respondent groups and interpreted against a standard scale. Testing with three distinct groups was a deliberate methodological decision, it enabled cross-group comparison and ensured that the design served divergent user needs rather than optimizing for a single audience.
The primary deliverable was a fully navigable 3D mobile virtual reality application for iOS iPad, comprising a complete virtual reconstruction of Panguil River Eco-Park's key landmarks, a contextual waypoint navigation system, an interactive minimap, a directional compass, and ambient sound design. Supporting deliverables included structured usability testing instruments across four categories, computed mean results for three respondent groups, and a full academic research paper submitted for publication.
Results across all four usability categories confirmed alignment with project goals and stakeholder expectations. Visual Aesthetics achieved an overall mean of 4.19/5, with the highest scores for accurately recreating the eco-park's appearance. Interactivity achieved an overall mean of 4.43/5 (the strongest category) with high scores for ease of use and the application's ability to give users a sense of being inside the park. Sensory Simulation achieved 4.31/5, with the highest scores for helping users "feel" the eco-park; auditory quality was identified as the area requiring future improvement. Navigation achieved 4.45/5 for Visitors and Potential Visitors, with strong scores for directional clarity and ease of use; Staff navigation accuracy scored 4.33/5 with the highest marks for route correctness.
Usability testing produced the following overall results across a 5-point Likert scale, interpreted as Very Good across all categories:
- Visual Aesthetics overall mean: 4.19 / 5
- Interactivity overall mean: 4.43 / 5
- Sensory Simulation overall mean: 4.31 / 5
- Navigation overall mean (Visitors and Potential Visitors): 4.45 / 5
- Navigation overall mean (Staff): 4.33 / 5
Potential Visitors recorded the highest means across all categories, confirming that the primary target audience was successfully reached. Qualitative feedback noted that users were able to recognize points of interest and achieve a genuine sense of presence within the eco-park; several participants noted the application was useful even for those who had already visited, as the 3D environment was perceived as visually comparable to the real park.
The identified area for improvement, auditory simulation scoring slightly lower than other categories, was noted in the conclusions as a priority for future iterations, with recommendations for louder ambient sound calibrated to the park's natural environment. Additional future recommendations included an augmented reality version for on-site visitors and expansion of the model to other eco-tourism destinations in the Philippines.
MoViT was recognized as a first-of-its-kind VR eco-tourism application for the region, received the Outstanding IT Capstone award from Malayan Colleges Laguna, was featured in The Age newspaper, and was presented at the 3rd International Conference on Hospitality, Leisure, Sports and Tourism at Waseda University, Tokyo. The research was published as Chapter 7 in e-Consumers in the Era of New Tourism by Springer Singapore in January 2016, confirming that the rigour of the design and research process met international academic peer review standards and directly supported the overarching goal of increasing global visibility for Panguil River Eco-Park.
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