Enriching the narrative experience in place
Project Overview
This project is to design an AR stop in CMU’s School of Design tour, aiming to use technology to let people know more about the process behind the design which is hard to achieve otherwise.
Persona
Establishing the persona for the tour was the first step of this project. It is very important to understand the audience and what they want at the initial stage in order to set an objective for this project.
Based on their profile, they are most interested in these fields: design program, inter-disciplinary learning, project process, and critique.
Understanding technology
Experiencing the Microsoft HoloLens
After experiencing the HoloLens by myself, I started to get know more about this technology, which is very helpful for the latter design. We can use several simple gestures (bloom, tap, drag…) to control everything. 3D objects can be added to the scene, and their sizes and location can be adjusted. One good thing about AR is that it is based on the real world (i.e. you can see both the real world and the virtual world), which won’t let you feel too unreal and dizzy.
Experiencing oculus quest VR
Initial Storyboard
Project of choice: Data Visualization of Margret Morisson
Place of choice: display case beside the design office on 1F
I divided the whole experience into two situations: with AR and without AR. This is because the display case is a very public space where there are a lot of people passing by. However, not all of the people have AR in their hands, so we need to make sure they can still see the project displayed in the case.
For people with AR, they can not only see the project but can also see multiple layers of this project (I’ll explain it later in this blog). In addition, they can also get navigation information about how to get to some room in this building.
Questions to consider:
- How to initiate the whole experience (i.e. how people get AR glasses?)
- How to design shared experience and personal experience
- How to combine physical object and digital world
- Multiple layers of the physical object. (inspired by the guest lecturer)
VR Storyboard
As I never drew in VR or any 3D space before, the process of creating this storyboard was new and exciting to me. What I thought I benefited most from it was to experience the interaction with a full scale. This allowed me to realize that if certain interaction was too hard for people to perform physically when they stand in front of the display case. In addition, viewing things in 3D also helped me to change my interaction because it was easy to imagine myself being a user interacting with the AR.
A little twist
Because I couldn’t find any interesting data or interaction within this project, I changed my project to perspective drawing.
What I learned
- Always consider your audience and think about what they want. Make sure don’t lose the audience.
- What is the take-away of the audience
- Focus more on the value of this project
- I’m happy that I went through this twisting process because it helps me take a step back and think about the objective of this project once more.
Improved storyboard
In this revised storyboard, I mainly focused on the process of collecting and analyzing data. I think it is valuable for the audience — the high schoolers — to understand this part because they may never experience the process of design research before. In addition, as interdisciplinary learning is also being emphasized in the school of design, it can reflect the core value of the school as well.
Reality Composer — prototyping tool
Reality Composer is an iPad-based app that can simulate AR in a relatively easy way.
Building Physical Model
This is the physical model for the project in the display case. By moving the physical icons manually, I was able to test out different interactions very efficiently.
