English Kitchen VR - learn English the fun way

English Kitchen VR is a platform that makes learning English language more immersive and fun by utilizing virtual reality. It ended up as a prototype and was never released commercially.

The Idea

The idea for this project came from Vilius Juknevičius who at the time was running a company that produced realistic looking visualisations for real estate agencies that allowed buyers to walk inside VR versions of in progress real estate properties before buying them. We were working in the same co-working space and were the only two people there working on virtual reality projects.

His brother was working as an english language teacher in China, and saw that there is a huge demand for both teachers and tools that make learning english language easier, more efficient and accessible. Vilius was absolute pro at making beautiful models, environments, adding textures and lighting, but had limited skills and resources in programming. I was the exact opposite. So he offered me to work together on a pilot for virtual reality platform that would make learning English language more immersive and fun.

VR was a new thing, so everybody tried to apply it to solve all the problems that were already solved before without the use of VR with a hope that new approach will be more attractive. Trying to apply it in language learning made sense as you are putting the learner in the simulation of the real world where he will actually need to use the language. For a pilot we decided to choose the theme of a kitchen as it is universal, fruit and vegetables are very recognizable and the whole setting seemed to be colorful and fun.

The Mechanics

After some brainstorming sessions we decided to go for simple idea of putting user inside the shoes of the cook who has to follow the recipe and put correct ingredients into the pot. As you complete the recipes one after another they become more and more complex. User can also choose difficulty setting that changes the amount of fruits and vegetables that are available. It was simple, straight forward and easy to understand.