11/24 — Research
I interviewed a fellow design student on the current experience with online lectures and studios through zoom. Some of the main points from this conversation were:
- Online experience is worse than in person studios
- Screen time fatigue, feeling more isolated and tired
- Wants less screen time and more in person interaction
- Feels trapped because everything is in her room
- She stays indoors for days
Based off of the conversation, the direction I want to take is one where people can have multiple sensory inputs rather than a single screen. There is joy in being able to hear, smell, and touch others in reality, which is nonexistent through zoom. So, creating a studio setting at home that utilizes these other senses would be ideal.
Personas
12/1 — Initial Sketches
Discussions with Peter:
- Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Interactivity
- Being able to observe what other students are working on
- How to bring in emotional support? Organizing and mapping emotions
- Studio work is quite sedentary. How to bring about mobility?
In my interaction, I’d like to focus on mobility. The main pain points with online studio is the sedentary aspect of working on your desk. In actual studio rooms, students walk around to view each other’s work, or walk across to room to chat and hang out. I want to bring those social cues as well as mobility in my mixed reality.
I’d like to focus on transforming the physical space around the user to one that mimics the room of another. Users can pick and choose where they’d like to place their peers desk within their own home.
To begin this process, I began looking at the current situation and tools offered in an online work session. I looked at both the physical space of working as well as the digital. I have two desks, one uses warm light, and the other uses cool light. And the main programs I use for work are Zoom, Facebook messenger, discord, Figma, Google, Spotify and adobe.
My desktop currently looks like the following when I work. I usually have adobe programs in the background, Spotify for music, and multiple tabs opened.
The following drawings are a simple visual comparing work with normal studio settings and home studios through Zoom or Discord.
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?
The role of a designer is to ensure that our sense of humanity are implemented in our digitized settings. Our future is increasingly artificial as people use many filters and avatars to represent who they are online. In the business of improving our digital space, I sometimes fear that we lose the uniqueness of being alive and breathing. As a designer, I’d like to ensure that these new man made environments does not aim to be perfect, but rather feel human. These places should be safe and comfortable environment where people feel like they can be just as transparent as they are in the real world. It should be a space where people can feel whatever emotions they want, and a place that is accepting of any type of speech.
Initial Storyboard
12/3 — Soft Crit
Soft Desk Crit with Jason:
- Look more into the future; Don’t be limited to holding a screen — think of a deeply embedded experience like contact lenses
- Further extract the idea — put away the ipad
- Think of 2–3 micro interactions such as pan and zoom, also look into more complex processes
- Accessibility of space. Not all room are going to be large enough to have multiple desks. Can a desk switch out with another one? Can the size be adjusted?
From these points, I looked into more integrated technology like Hololens and how they create a fully immersive AR experience.
I developed more sketches on how I’d like to have a more seamless interaction with augmented reality and the individual desk spaces. With these sketches I created an app that can be applied with Hololens, called Share Desk.
I created a diagram as well to fully understand all the pieces that go into Share Desk.
In this diagram, you can see how each element is influenced by one another in the Share Desk system. Users use a head mounted display like the Hololens and connects to a cloud server. This tool is connected with your computer and webcam. The Hololens connects both the AR space as well as the desk/physical space for a seamless augmented reality integration.
12/8 — More Sketching
I created a new storyboard to follow for my video. The beginning starts with a welcome back sign as users log into the Hololens. The desk is highlighted with a slide button and users can “unlock” their desk to view their last saved work. Users can also pinch any tab they are using in their physical desktop and pull it out of the AR space to view multiple screens at the same time.
In the next section of the video, users can pull up a student’s desk and call the student to view their desk as well as its contents.
I am still considering how I should finish the video, with either an avatar of the student you are talking to, or rather a video feed.
In this sketch, I considered how each part in the User Interface system can be shown to users for different options such as uploading and scanning an object on your desk.
12/10 — Final
In this video we will look at the interaction from the POV of Aisha (the TA). As soon as you put on the hololens, it connects to the server and you are immediately greeted with a welcome back sign. Users are logged onto Share Desk app and now the desk is highlighted with a simple note. User slide the desk to view their last saved ar experience with the Share Desk app. In this case, Aisha had written some notes to share with her class on as you can see on the bottom right corner. This is what other students can view when they are on a call together. She likes what she is reading on her computer, so Aisha decides to pinch the screen out of her macbook. She simply pulls off that window from her macbook screen onto the virtual space. This allows her to view multiple screens at once, and updates her desk with this new window above, so that those who call her in Share Desk, may see the window as well.
Users can also use voice commands to user different features in Share Desk. Aisha called for Jackie’s desk at the beginning of this clip. We see her moving the desk over to another part of her room. In this case it is placed right next to her on her bed. She wants to make sure everyone is on task so she calls Jackie. Jackie appears above her desk as well as the work she put on online on her desk to be viewed by peers. Aisha and Jackie can discuss topics on her work, school, or social life in 3d settings. Now if you notice, Aisha was able to move this desk into any part of her room. This feature can cover an even larger area.
Let’s just say Aisha decides to place jackies desk into other parts of her home.
A key interaction with Share desk is its mobility. The main pain points with online studio is the sedentary aspect of working on your desk. In actual studio rooms, students walk around to view each other’s work, or walk across to room to chat and hang out. With Share desk, you can bring those social cues as well as mobility in this mixed reality setting.
Users can pick and choose where they’d like to place their peers desk within their own home. It’s interesting to note how some users can transform the physical space around them to mimic those of another space. Essentially changing the layout/functionality of each space with this feature.
Conclusion/Reflection
Share Desk can help students engage with each other in social and cognitive ways. It’s mobility creates a unique and energetic way to keep students motivated in class and with their projects. Looking at their project processes in real time helps students stay up to date with their work, and create an AR studio culture in a more organic way than through traditional screens.
How were the skills you developed in the first project similar and/or different from the second project? What is your understanding of the role of an Environments designer?
The first project really opened up a new way of implementing designs in a 3d space. The second project does the same, but provides a futurist perspective in the entire project. I enjoyed the thought processes behind the second project since it allows for more creativity and unique in the projects. These are all designs that have never been done before with the current tech that we have. Through this project, I learned that the role of a designer isn’t one to stick to the current trends or systems in place, but to design future trends and systems.
