CMU Mixed Reality Tour Experience
Environments Studio Mini Project 2
project brief: prospective students and families currently have a number of options to visit Carnegie Mellon University: a student-led tour of campus, a guided Virtual Campus Tour. The University recognizes the limitations of these existing tour options and therefore is hiring you to develop an autonomous (no tour guide) augmented reality tour. This tour will allow visitors to explore both campus and the surrounding community that is a vital part of the CMU experience.
context: “there is extensive research and development in wearable mixed reality devices. Unlike virtual reality, which completely immerses you in a virtual world by obscuring your entire view, mixed reality blends real and virtual to create hybrid experiences. In short, there is a digital overlay to the real world. For this project we are looking 10 years out using technology such as Microsoft’s Hololens, which would be available on campus.”
client: Carnegie Mellon University
target audience: prospective students and their families
Questions to consider:
● What information about CMU and the surrounding neighborhoods is currently available and in what media?
● What are the affordances of augmented reality? What happens when you move beyond a flat screen into full 3D digital artifacts situated in place?
● Are there 3D physical objects, furniture, display cases/student work, etc. added to the environment to improve the interaction?
● How does our physical environment impact how we use digital devices?
●What are key stories that need to be told about CMU and the area? How should this information be delivered?
● What information is each type of user hoping to learn through the tour?
● What are the current identity guidelines for CMU and how can your design relate?
Developing Personas
In class, we learned about creating a set demographic of people in order to understand our scope and audience.
Considerations regarding personas:
- Personas may be considered stereotypical and biased
- The qualities in a persona should range from a spectrum, especially those that have special needs or care
- No more than 2 personas should be prospective students
When developing personas, we wanted to make sure we got a wide range of students that each had specific needs and desires when coming into a University so that we could use that information to further enhance our tour experience. We made sure that one of our students was an international student and one was an International student and one was from the U.S. Other differences included their parents’ educational background, their activities and interests, GPAs, and overall goals that they wanted to achieve in college.
Rationale: we wished to create a diverse set of people, each with individual goals and interests. Thus we considered geographical location, ethnicity, financial status, and academic interests.
Self-reflection: As the prevalence of digital media in our physical environments increases daily, what is the role and/or responsibility of designers in shaping our environments?
Given that we are creating a mixed reality tour set 10 years from now, it goes without show that the expectations and success of virtual reality will greatly exceed that of our present time.
Like all UI designs, UI designs for mixed reality should have universal affordances of what each icon does.
Furthermore, the jump from 2D space to 3D space leads to expanded perceptions. As such, it’s important to consider the peripheral views, as well as the above v.s. below perspectives.
Initial Storyboarding
