Campus Tour
Link to Gia’s Medium: https://gnmarino-cmu-design.medium.com/vr-tour-reflections-911787472e07
November 17th
Today Gia and I spent some time creating our personas. We made up two prospective students and one person each that would accompany the prospects on the tour. We have Liam, who represents many of the students in design as a young adult from the Bay Area. He is also hard of hearing so that Gia and I will consider accommodations for him in what gestures we decide, and added that he’s interested in tennis so we include that in our overall tour. His grandfather, Bo, is concerned about finances and his grandson’s health and nutrition. This is much like how my own parents are.
Amelia is from Mumbai, concerned about living within a new culture, finding good food to eat, and making friends. Her mother, Diya, is worried about her daughter’s safety on campus and how Amelia can find help in an emergency situation. For this we asked Tara about her own experience and how her mother felt about her starting college at CMU.
This storyboard shows one idea, that we could focus on prospects learning about their potential classes and how they can begin considering what their interests are. The example projects shown could help prospects become excited about a particular class, and shows parents what a student’s typical coursework looks like.
These storyboards have a similar design to the previous idea but instead focus on food. Many prospective students are interested to know what the food is like on campus, especially since they have to have the Red Plan in their freshman year. The interaction could also include what a typical meal block looks like. This would also show parents that their children would be getting the nutrition that they need.
We still need to brainstorm more ideas, and Gia is particularly interested in generating ideas that push what could be possible 10 years in the future.
Gia’s ideas include a 3D pop up of carnival, and a carnival game where you win a digital prize, food menus and reviews popping up as you walk by food places, a feature where safety practices are highlighted when you walk past them, off campus tour of some sorts, and showing a settings menus with all the features you can activate.
November 22nd
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?
Designers take on the responsibility of keeping spaces as accessible as possible. As technology continues to integrate with our physical spaces, it’s important for these spaces to be intuitive, easy to navigate, and not overwhelming for young kids, older people, as well as people with disabilities.
While chatting in class, Gia and I decided we wanted to focus on areas near campus; Murray, Forbes, and Walnut St. When Gia went on campus tours, her favorite part was discovering the restaurants and places to go around town. The food and experiences were the most memorable part of her campus visits, and so we’ll begin to prototype ways to improve travel and discovery for students from out of town.
November 29th
December 11th
(Medium won’t let me put photos side by side.)
We started off with a lot of ideas and ended up narrowing down as we went. We started off with having borders when you got close to the borders of the area (like the limits of Murray) and we also wanted to have a screenshotting mechanism so people could save things they see. But we needed to narrow down our tour to more specific so we can focus on certain interactions and execute them well.
We previously had the locations listed on the bus stop itself but were advised by Daphne not to put everything at once because of the cognitive load placed on the user.
Scotty includes both text and audio (speech bubble and bark) to prompt user to walk up to the bus stop and become enthusiastic about exploring around campus. While deciding where audio should go, Daphne mentioned that people often are not walking alone on tours so we refrained from having a lot of audio, especially since it’d be distracting while you’re exploring and walking around.
When working on the map went through many phases figuring out how to prototype it. We decided while talking to Daphne and Tay that it would be a good idea to mark on the map places that are off campus that would be good to know about like common off campus neighborhoods kids live in our grocery stores and parks. We also decided that instead of having a 2D interface in the corner of the lens while on the bus. We’d only have the 3D map so there wasn’t a bunch of stuff in your vision. We also did that to utilize the AR aspects of 3D space.
While finishing up the 3D map we ended up adding icons that pop up, because while finalizing, I (Julianna) thought that having the icons pop up with eye tracking would be a good idea, so the map wasn’t too crowded and catered to what the user wanted to see.
We felt that it was important to include this step to demonstrate the continual progress of the tour throughout your journey. This would show how the tour guides prospective students in Pittsburgh, since if the tour suddenly disappeared during the bus ride it’d be quite scary to have to travel in an unknown city without any knowledge of where you are, where you’re going, and no familiarity with how the bus system even works.
When we were making the assets for the video we realized we needed a way to activate the 3D map on the bus. We didn’t want a 2D icon in the users vision. so we decided to use a wrist as a touch point and have a 3D icon that the user can use to pull up the map at anytime.
Before we had this concept for the reviews; this idea was thought to be too 2D. It’s similar to a screen, is in the middle of your vision, would make you stop in the middle of the sidewalk… overall we had to make several changes to this idea. We also reconsidered the aesthetics here. Right now it looks quite generic, like it could fit with reviews from anywhere, so we made them more CMU-themed. We made similar themed changes for our bus map.
Idea adjusted so you can pick it up, observe, and listen. Also includes more interaction with Scotty so that you’re prompted to initiate the interaction, and would the interaction overall would be more delightful to participate in.
Self-reflection: How were the skills you developed in the first project similar and/or different from the second project?
In both projects I struggled with tending to make my concepts too 2D, interactions that wouldn’t enhance your spatial experience but apply 2D interfaces to a 3D one. I had not considered before what my own ideas were for what the future of hybrid spaces could look like, and that’s where I really found difficulty, in imagining what I could not see. It was sort of easier to imagine concepts for the second project because I related to and understood my audience better, as a CMU student. I learned different programs for each project; for the museum I learned Sketchup and practiced more in Photoshop, while for the tour I used several programs including Illustrator, Aero, Dimension, and AfterEffects. Gia used Solidworks as well.
What is your understanding of the role of an Environments designer?
I didn’t think it was going to always include technology, so I was surprised that both our projects dealt with tech in space. E seems to be very connected with the idea of hybrid spaces and the “metaverse,” perhaps not specifically Zuckerburg’s idea of the metaverse, but the general concept of how the internet and technology will begin to become more and more physically part of our lives. It’s all very futuristic and interesting, though I’d like to see more examples of the range of what an E designer can do, since the seniors also designed museum spaces.
