A Bank museum
Outcome
Once played on a mobile device you will experience a virtual branch of a bank, where all services of a bank will be visible. You can navigate through the whole scene using waypoints. The purpose of this VR experience is to inform users about banking, its services and how it can be improved in future.
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain”.
Introduction
Banks are the most basic necessity for everyone We do have both good and bad experience while availing bank’s services. The whole project is about portraying banking and its services in a different form which is virtual reality. It will be an educational journey for someone who is from a different domain or just a customer and on another side, it will be a medium for bankers to improve and digitize their services.
The game mechanics of this bank scene is the simple navigation based.
You will be shown waypoints, one of the navigation mechanics used for Virtual reality experiences which will be like a network of paths where you can move to the neighboring point and also come back in the same manner.
Describing the scene, there will be a huge hall having glass walls, inside that hall all the banking operation will be done on different counters like Accounts, wealth management, insurance, loan etc. The scene will start with an inquiry room and next visible options will be going towards ATM or wait in the center for your turn to avail executives help/suggestion on your banking needs.
Design
The targeted audience :
The audience of this experience can be anyone as soon as he has little idea about the virtual world.
The user in prospect wants to try out a virtual banking experience where he will be informed about various banking services giving a luxury like an experience.
The design of the game requires to be simple and short since it’s mostly about the experience itself rather than complicated gameplay so largely focus was on creating a real like experience with suitable and realistic banking services. The material will be mostly glass/metal and with proper daylighting and reflections, it will look real. There will be office rooms, dedicated consultant room, self-service, refreshment room to read and have a cup of coffee.
Persona Example
Name: Harvy Spector
Age: 29
Occupation: Corporate LawyerMotivation: Harvy is a corporate lawyer and uses banking services more often, but most of the time he is so busy that he could not get to know current banking service and how to avail them, with this VR experience he can get to know banking service suitable for him without taking a step out and then waiting in a queue.
VR Experience: Basic.
Sketches and prototyping :
While thinking for a modern looking bank branch I have gone through images/videos of various bank branched that exist physically, banks like DBS, Standard chartered have built some amazing branches to give their customers a comfortable banking experience.
Inspired by them I have sketched my first sketch of branch map:

The scene would contain a hub and waiting area, a row of ATMs, inquiry room, refreshment zone, kids area, dedicated customer interaction cabins, self-service counters, a conference room, office blocks for bank’s internal operations.
Iterations
First iteration:
Feedback question: Do you think anything is missed or not required in a casual bank branch scene map?
Reply: All the required cabin/rooms for day to day banking are covered. You can replace kids area from the scene with something more related to banking or portray some information/announcements related to bank services.
Feedback question: Do you think there should be more entry points/doors in the scene?
Reply: I don’t think in a virtual reality more that one entry points are required which can be different in a physical branch where many people will use the doors and having more than one entry/exit would be easy for customers.
In the first iteration of a basic sketch, I have figured out unnecessary rooms in the map like kids area and exit doors at the back side. At this stage, I have also figured out the materials and textures for cabins/room.

Second Iteration: By this time I was ready with my basic model built using Unity pro builder, the time was to pick and change the default materials for the wall. Time for user feedback:
Feedback question: Can you relate rooms and walls with real-world branches/offices and what material for the rooms will be more professional and modern?
Reply: Scene walls do give a real like feel but using an only material should not be constraint an there is no cost involved so you can use different materials for different rooms, soothing material for relaxing zone and shiny materials for offices and cabins.
So I have decided to use metal, marble, wood and glass materials, so marble flooring, with wooden walls for gallery and refreshment room, glass finish for external walls and personal cabins, metal look for hub and ATMs row.

Third iteration:
Feedback question: Do you think the lighting of the environment is enough and at proper places?
Reply: Lights are good assuming it is a daytime but lights in nighttime should also be enough and proper assuming it an office.
I have decided to implement extra lightings apart from the environment lightings. So added a few points, area and spotlights in cabins and an external room, added a centralized lighting for the main hall.

Implementation
To decide where to start was not easy, after viewing and taking inputs from physical and future branch prototypes. The first step was to create a gray model using Pro builder and giving objects realistic extrusion.
Have to spend days just to browse the appropriate materials and objects prefabs. Sketchbab and Unity asset store solved most of the requirements for the scene.
Next, after getting a proper scene ready time for implementing navigation system, I have to use the Waypoint navigation method which was not that easy as I thought of but I did it finally.






So now a scene with navigation was ready, time was for testing and user feedback. Considering the feedback I decided to give lightings for each corner of the room and hall.
So the final scene looked quite satisfying:

Conclusion
Thinking and designing an architecture model is never easy that I learned for sure. It takes a lot of research and efforts to decide how a real environment will look in the virtual world.
There are endless things that can be implemented to take it further like promoting banks new services and policies over a notification board, suggesting user to invest on top performing equities and funds, connecting the cryptocurrencies, moreover when authenticated user can perform any banking service just sitting in his balcony with all the feel of a priority bank customer.