Research Overview
Outline of the scope for my research project. Including considerations into the user experience (UX) aspects of my plan, along with any ethical considerations relevant to my research topic.
Over the last few weeks we have explored a whole range of different emerging technologies and how to use them. Throughout the whole process I’ve looked into the many applications for such technologies and how they are used in the world around us (even where we don’t realise it). The Technologies we explored were:
- VR – An exciting new world of technology where a device covers your main senses (sight and sound) to allow you to experience and interact with a virtual world, with limitless possibilities about its uses, such technology even sparked the creation of blockbusting films such as The Matrix and Ready Player-One, cementing the technology as one to be looked out for in the development of society in the future.
- AR – The logical step below VR, AR involves bringing in virtual elements into the real world othen done through the use of an external device showing a 3D object in the camera overlayed over the background, to increase the believability the object or objects are often set to be static allowing the user to explore the object from different angles by physically moving around the virtual object.
- 3D Panoramic Animations – The Final Technology we discovered ties in very closely to VR as the scenes created using this technology are able to be experienced with the help of VR, 3D panoramic animations allow the creator to display a large quantity of visual information all at once or the most common use case being to present a story from your own perspective allowing the user tpo look wherever they want to experience the story in their own unique way, the benefit being that this creates a sense of heightened realism and a strong connection to the story as a whole.
There are many exciting uses for each of these Emerging technologies so as i process which ont to go for Ill go over some examples of how they are used currently in society as a whole.
Coming straight back to VR You mostly see this technology used towards games and creative outlets such as Robot Recall, The Metaverse, Openbrush and many more however Turning more towards the side of AR the recent Apple Vision Pro also overlays virtual buttons and screens over the real world to create a fully immersive experience, here is an example:
This also links quite heavily with what is considered the future of wearable technology which is smart glasses. These use a few methods to work successfully with the current limitations of technology all coming out with varying results that are often too bulky to wear out comfortably. These methods include but not limited to, projection AR and the use of pixels in the glass itself to create what is essentially a see through screen. However the technology is still in its infancy with many companies like apple and others working on it between projects in hopes the technology advances far enough to achieve good results in a small form factor like glasses. However VR and AR glasses as i mentioned are not quite at the wearable every day stage in their development and therefore are way less practical of a method for me to use in the making of this project, as the equipment needed is not necessarily easy to get hold of for the everyday person limiting its use cases. The Next alternative was a 3D panoramic animation, now these do benefit from being accessible on nearly every device in some form so that does alleviate some of the concerns when compared with VR technology while maintaining the benefits of VR like the possibilities of what can be achieved in that software. The main problem however as I found out in researching the topic is the Rendering times, while in theory the possibilities are endless as to what you can make or do, in reality it’s not always a feasible time to actually get the render back from the computer. Due to all the little details the more effort you put in the worse the time taken to get it rendered will be overall, which can have a significant effect on your workflow.
The final option is AR, as I’ve briefly mentioned before there are a many methods of implementing AR into a project as long as the user is known to have a device able to read the AR environment most AR methods should work. The alternative if they don’t of course is Projector AR, this is the type of AR you see on Car heads up displays like this one.
As you can see when it comes to head up displays, it is quite clear to see how the projected AR infographic can be extremely helpful when applied to the right context, to show navigation instructions in real time, speed limit and gauge data and much more, the possibilities for applications both professionally and for entertainment are almost unlimited.
My Plan
And that is why after going through all the options I think the one with the most potential and that would be most interesting to me would be the AR Technology. The next step in my project was to find an application worthy of the technology, being a car person my first thought was to somehow relate the technology to that as an overall goal. However after doing research into in-car and in-dealership applications, not many come to mind that would be particularly useful past what is already done been done with projection technology, my first thought had been as a way of demonstrating the different colours a car could come in as an interactable ar overlay by scanning the car itself. However even if this on paper would be a cool idea after researching the feasibility of such a thing it would take a significant amount of coding and a neural network to learn and understand the object from every angle and lighting condition in order to reliably recognise it then on top of that overlaying a colour onto the car would require the device to understand exactly where the car was in relation to the phone at all times. Therefore my next idea was to move in a different direction, in order to have a more static trigger, calling upon one of my childhood the minecraft guide books. I believe with the right implementation of the technology the guide books could come to life. The user could simply scan a picture from the book and the blocks would pop up, there is even the possibility of implementing an interaction where upon the user taps the blocks and they move to match whatever the book was guiding them to obviously this would vary based on the pages contents.
A good example would be this page on redstone doors a particular favourite of mine, in the AR app the user would be able to hover their phone over the different parts of the page to show a 3D rendering of the blocks displayed, and if i were to add an interaction the user could tap to activate or deactivate the door. This level of 3D interaction would not only make the book more fun but also help with the understanding of the parts themselves and how they are placed, playing a significant role in the effectiveness of the books teachings for the better.
Ethically the project should only be adding to the current experience to the user therefore I do not believe that any harm could be caused by the implementation of the technology in this way in fact the use of this type of technology could work in favour of the books themselves, adding a layer of intractability previously impossible without this technology.
References
- Lee, T. et al. (2021) A study on recognizing multi-real World object and estimating 3D position in Augmented Reality – The Journal of Supercomputing, SpringerLink. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11227-021-04161-0 (Accessed: 04 November 2024).
Minecraft handbooks on Mercari: Childrens books, Minecraft, book cover (2019) Pinterest. Available at: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/731975745671262437/ (Accessed: 04 November 2024).
Farwell, N. et al. (2015) Minecraft Redstone Handbook. New York, NY: Scholastic Inc.
Anderson, P. (2018) Inception introduces Bookful, an AR platform licensing PRH Brands, Publishing Perspectives. Available at: https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/11/inception-introduces-bookful-ar-platform-licensing-prh-brands/ (Accessed: 05 November 2024).
Apple Vision Pro, a spatial computer headset, revealed (2023) OS X Daily. Available at: https://osxdaily.com/2023/06/05/apple-vision-pro-a-spatial-computer-headset-revealed/ (Accessed: 06 November 2024).
crospotter13 (no date) S-Class, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCgy3askMcM (Accessed: 05 November 2024).
