Physical & digital baking fun
Chelsea Sugar Factory: Visitor Centre

The target audience is school-aged children. We know young visitors to exhibitions enjoy hands-on activities that allow them to play, learn and express creativity. We also know how kids love to play “shop” and even in this digital world they still love playing with physical props.
The Challenge
A key challenge for this experience was the young age of the target audience, with a short attention span, and that it had to cater to large school groups all using the interactive at the same time. We also really wanted to capture something of the real-world pleasure of baking in a digital experience.On top of that, we're working with multiple screens and physical props, trying to turn a large amount of video, a touch-screen interface, and physical props into one cohesive experience.


The Solution
Star-baker Annabel White guides the baker on every step, with two screens programmed to work together throughout the process. The blending of physical and digital happens by using beautifully crafted replicas of the ingredients, with RFID tags inside, that the visitors physically bring to their bench. Each ingredient is then magically recognised by our chef; “yes, that’s the sugar, now measure it …”.

The Results
We witnessed young children engaged and excited to be learning new skills and wanting to go home and bake. Kids loved the process of finding the physical ingredients. They carefully listened to each instruction given by Annabel - if she said clean the bench - then they would "clean" the screen!The centre has only just opened with kids now successfully completing the baking of biscuits and cakes every day. One interesting and unexpected result is that they are running baking races to see who can complete the task the quickest!



