Introduction
When forming our group, the three of us had overlapping interests in augmented reality, education and storytelling. Add in the potential of artificial intelligence as a chat bot and you are met with immersive storytelling experience.
Our deliverable focused on storyboarding and prototypes. Due to technology limitations we kept our direction conceptual while we planned out the various systems and visuals needed to immerse our audience.
Semi-Structured Interview
Part of the process was to determine the feasibility and value of this sort of tool. To learn more, we interviewed a local expert in the art collections/museum space. We did a semi-structured interview to allow for thoughtful pivots during the interview process.
Add Don’t Subtract
The biggest takeaway from the interview was that the tool needs to add to the experience. Focusing too much on the entertainment value would negate the educational and storytelling aspects. Focusing on the physical objects and enhancing with augmented elements would be the best way to do this.
Co-Design Workshop
As we began setting up the pre-experience process, we needed to understand what the app setup would entail. As we developed our own wireframes, we wanted to use a co-design workshop to see how others would envision this process.
Concept
The culmination of this process is highlighted by 4 prototypes. The phone setup, AR glasses interface, AI chatbot conversation, and AR artifact interactions. These were the key interactions we identified throughout the research process.
Next Steps
- Progress the concept and digital prototypes into a physical prototype.
- User test physical prototype.
- Refinement and validation.
- Potentially morph into a thesis or post-graduation project.
Reflection
I was able to experience the benefits of multi-disciplinary groups. We were able to delegate based on skills to create a more well-rounded concept. This made the process go smoothly as we were able to lean on each other’s backgrounds.
This project combined my primary interest in education while incorporating smaller interests in augmented reality and artificial intelligence.
Problems that we ran into…
1. Scheduling conflicts.
2. Health/availability issues.
How we pivoted…
1. Adjusted our co-design workshop and user-testing timing to allow for our expert interview to take priority.
2. Pivoted our tasks and workload to provide our groupmate(s) to return to full health/availability.
