PATIO Interactive

Toronto 4D ChinaTown Tour

ChinaTown BIA

We collaborated with Toronto ChinaTown’s Business Improvement Area to produce unique 360 experiences that center around community support, facilitating connections with local businesses and bolstering commerce.

Tourism in the Digital Age

4D Chinatown, a full experience that enables consumers to support small businesses by purchasing their products online while enjoying the rich history and culture of Chinatown.

Unlike traditional virtual reality experiences, these offer users the opportunity to not only venture through their in-store experiences online and support local business but also learn fascinating stories about Chinatown’s community.

Goals

Provide an immersive 360 tour of participating Toronto-ChinaTown Businesses. Due to COVID-19 disrupting the foot traffic appeal of Chinatown tourism and shopping.
Invite businesses patrons to be immersed into a 360 shopping experience, battling social distance limitations.
Offer a bespoke and immersive shopping experience, filled with business owner narratives, shopping information and community knowledge.
New way to explore the community and order food, products, or services from local Chinatown businesses which users love

Our Approach

Using 8K 360 cinematography equipment, PATIO Interactive set out to produce 10 unique 360 experiences, for Toronto’s Chinatown, BIA. Our talented team of producers, production specialists and animation artists collaborated to bring a wide scope of technical abilities and content production to this project.

While facing challenges of distancing during COVID-19, the team worked to produce top quality tour experiences, with complimentary media for further immersion, safely. Working closely with ChinaTown BIA on narrative, creative and technical logistics in order to showcase historic, multicultural content while providing fresh insight to local commerce and community partners.

Final Solution and the impact

PATIO Interactive’s 360 experience, built for ChinaTown BIA, forms part of an exciting new website that allows users to explore the history of Chinatown through its geographic and chronological evolution; while highlighting the businesses of today who have been significantly impacted by the pandemic.

The site brings together a multitude of sensory components to create a memorable, at home immersive experience of Toronto’s Chinatown for anyone interested, worldwide. This unique combination of guided and self exploration appeals to a wide range of users and beautifully showcases the rich history, vibrant culture and diverse communities involved in the heritage of Toronto’s Chinatown.

Bringing the businesses and community to life with the voices of its members, this experience blends education, exploration and e-commerce in a truly innovative and exciting manner.

View 4D Chinatown