A WebAR treasure hunt that transforms visits to the Children's Museum into an interactive adventure with 3D dinosaurs and face filters, no app downloads required.
Creating interactive, immersive experiences within cultural and educational spaces often faces a critical barrier: the friction generated by requiring visitors to download native applications. At the Children's Museum of Costa Rica (Museo de los Niños), the challenge was to boost family and child engagement by transforming the traditional tour into a seamless digital adventure. To address this challenge, the Immersive Technologies Lab at Universidad CENFOTEC designed and developed Mundo Aventura, a Web Augmented Reality (WebAR) solution that deploys instantly upon scanning a QR code.
At its technical core, the project utilizes a modular stack built on 8th Wall, A-Frame (JavaScript/HTML), and React. This architecture enables advanced 3D graphics and complex interaction logic to run directly within the mobile browser, ensuring high performance without compromising accessibility. The system integrates multiple technical modules, ranging from face tracking and marker-based AR to markerless spatial positioning and built-in real-time photo and video capture capabilities.
The experience is articulated through an interconnected ecosystem tied together by a central Hub. In Dino Búsqueda, visitors explore the museum facilities by scanning physical markers to unlock life-sized 3D dinosaurs and collect digital stickers. Mundo Aventura Inmersivo transports users into a full digital Jurassic environment complete with period vegetation and the museum's iconic characters (Sumobot, Museito, and Museita). Meanwhile, Dino Máscara leverages face tracking to transform children into an animated Triceratops through interactive filters and sound effects.
Developed using an agile methodology (Kanban) with rapid iteration cycles, the project logged a total of 6,206 visits across its various experiences. Beyond the quantitative results, Mundo Aventura demonstrated how collaboration between academia and cultural institutions can democratize access to cutting-edge immersive technologies, delivering a successful case study in organic engagement and edutainment in real-world settings.