OVERVIEW
PROJECT TYPE
Augmented reality
UX/UI design
TEAM
Claire Niemeier
Siyi Zhu
Ziyu Shao
DATE
March–May 2024
INSPIRATION
We have an impulse when we go to special places to leave a mark. To declare that we were there, and to create a collective memory of sorts.
People carve their initials into trees, leave locks on a bridge, or write entries in a guest book. But unfortunately a lot of these things can damage the environment or create structural issues.
Using AR means that we can make our mark part of the physical environment without damaging or disrupting it.
THE CONCEPT
My idea was pretty simple: visitors place virtual sticky notes in the air around landmarks and monuments, creating a cloud of notes that other visitors can walk around and interact with. I used Midjourney (with varying degrees of success) to create some concept images of what this experience might look like for our project proposal.
I imagine this experience being used at lots of different types of locations. People could write reflections or memories at memorial sites such as the 911 Memorial in NYC or the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC. Or the experience might be used around outdoor sculptures or art installations to spark conversation about culture and art.
My teammates Siyi and Zac took the lead on scripting the experience in Unity. We built our prototype around the Jim Henson statue on UMD’s campus which had already been scanned and uploaded to Niantic’s Lightship Virtual Positioning System (VPS).
Sticky notes were added as child game objects of the location mesh so that when a user holds their phone up to the statue, their device identifies the visual and positional information of the statue and the notes appear.
My initial sketches included three onboarding screens explaining the app functionalities and interactions, but because this is likely a one-time experience for most users, we wanted to bring them into the actual experience portion of the app more quickly.
We reduced onboarding from three screens to one screen and kept the explanation brief.
We added contextual prompts within the AR experience so that users see instructions when they need them, not before.
We also considered asking users to create accounts so they could save notes, but we discarded this idea in order to reduce friction in onboarding and to promote the feeling that this is a special, location-bound experience.
FINAL DESIGNS
The classic sticky note yellow and a handwritten header font give the app a fun, friendly feel. Plenty of contrast ensures that screen elements can easily be seen against different backgrounds.
Notes cascade down into the scene at the beginning of the experience, adding to the impression that the notes are part of the physical environment.
A sound effect plays when new notes are placed into the scene, providing positive feedback to the user and adding a splash of fun.
Visitors type out a message and can select their desired color for their sticky note.
Users can place their notes into the scene wherever they’d like, smoothly transitioning the note from screen space to world space.
To prevent the space from becoming too crowded, each note fades at a steady rate, disappearing completely after one year. (This timeframe would be customizable for each location, depending on the number and frequency of guests.)
Like and dislike buttons appear when a visitor gets close to a note. Each dislike is a down vote, making the note fade an additional increment. Liking a note makes it more opaque, resulting in the note sticking around longer.
The idea is that this would serve as a sort of natural content moderation, making especially fun or meaningful notes more prominent.
FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS
Iron out the wrinkles - There are a couple minor issues with note fading and with passing text from the input to the new note which we weren’t able to resolve because of the tight timeline.
Improving like/dislike buttons - We got feedback from a user during user testing that it wasn’t immediately clear that the like/dislike icons were buttons that they could interact with.
Deeper user study - We would need to do a larger user study to see how people tend to interact with the experience and to determine if our content moderating system actually works as imagined.
FURTHER EXPLORATIONS
More creative uses for sound - What other sound effects could we add to enhance the experience? And how could we take sound even further? Maybe notes are read aloud and get louder when you get close to them.
Explore other applications - I can easily imagine this type of collective note taking experience being used in other contexts - academic poster showcases, art exhibits, outdoor festivals, etc.
CLAIRE NIEMEIER
