Labster Open Builder — Chris Houghton

LABSTER

Simulate Science, without code

A key bottleneck at Labster was that simulations often lagged behind the school curriculum—they were never ready in time for the school year.

We needed a way to speed up the creation of simulations and empower scientists to build them without requiring expertise in the Unity Engine.

Open Builder

So came the Open Builder Project, I spoke to users internally to understand current pain points in the Internal Builder program.

Mindset was that if we can’t make an application intuitive and easy to use for our own people, we’d have no chance of making it easy for potential B2C users, which is where we wanted to go, allowing an open source platform for scientists from all over the world to create simulations.

The future is here!

Conceptually, we envision a simulation capable of building a lab using the latest Unity engine. With the right investment, this could be the next step in creating visually stunning labs, positioning Labster far ahead of its competitors.

Over the course of a few weeks, I’ve explored Unity and its tools, leveraging community resources to create a fun and highly realistic lab experience.

Questions / Challenges in Simulation being input

Simplify the process

Scientists had to learn XML to make any changes to the simulations, which made creating high-quality content difficult.

I began by providing templates and building an interface for the code, allowing scientists to interact with and test the simulation as it was being developed.