Category: Thesis

What an amazing set of presentations from classmates! The reviewers also had such a wonderful and amazing set of insights for everyone.  Feeling so inspired by everyone. Here’s some feedback/takeaways:

Q’s = feedback from reviewers

A’s = solutions for next draft

Technical clarity  

Q: Unsure which quilts are being used/ mended. Is it one? is it all of them, any of them? 

A: Include a layered final quilt rendering / breakdown of influences. could be a visual timeline of how different family quilts influenced the design decisions or a gif of final quilt build

Q:  Whats the technical journey of the memory. Illustrate the mechanisms making it happen, from captured on mobile to discoverable through quilt to generated tap-able virtual leaves, each revealing a memory (technical demo). an illustrated pathway making the opaque black box transparent

ex: how does a maple leaf memory become digitally tied to image target. How does app know to generate virtual leaves and reveal the correctly associated memories.  Is it connected to a cloud database like Firebase to help with world saving?

A: (technical diagram, moving beyond the UX,UI. showing the data model, flow diagrams of how things are paired, the pathways from camera to swift ui image picker to reality composer to swift ui)

Q: Are the leaves tapped during augmented reality sequence real or virtual

using image of the real leaf in UX of AR/ Explore mode rendering was visually appealing, but confused how the app is used

A: have more explicit text/arrow that says “tap virtual leaves” right now it says just “leaves around you”.

Q: Is it limited to just photos? What kind of memories are being stored / range of media.

• • could it be a larger range of media? storytelling through quilts is an oral history tradition, would be nice to have more audio storytelling / sound and music incorporated. maybe video or gifs

A: have a mvp of images, but reiterate that ideally it would be the range, maybe even audio recording ability vs written with each memory that is stored.

Q: how many and how they then manifest as virtual leaves

• • • • • How is world saving and file management addressed? (technical)
        • How does reality composer communicate with swift ui
      • GPS / Map of memory locations
      • digital background that makes sense?

Conceptual clarity 

• • • • continuing to pull the thread of looking at past ways of making and telling stories to inform new ones

• wants to hear more stories like the nephew one woven throughout. 

App Title: Memory Quilt / Lets go for a walk

Short description: Memory Quilt is an AR quilt project for my nephews. Created by mending a family quilt, it celebrates their family’s love for nature, time spent together, and how they might share those stories with one another. Embroidered leaves of neighborhood trees back in Tennessee found on the quilt become shifting repositories of memories, unlocked through a companion AR mobile app.

Update: For this week I focused on building a mockup of the “Add to Collection Mode” and tested through sketch remotely with my brother back in TN. Continuing to work on  the AR explore mode – thinking both about the interaction and balance of Screen/World space.

Usertesting

1st Sketch Prototype

User tester 1  

• would like ability to write a small something about the memory, what makes the moment unique
• date & location, an ability to geotag

User tester 2 

• to have the main buttons closer to where the thumb naturally lies, at the bottom of screen
• to have it stay as an option on each leaf page in stead of a single screen asking whether to take new picture or from camera roll

2nd Sketch Prototype 

User tester 3

• ability to edit memory

James 4.25

• would love the ability to write / tag what made that moment special
• timestamp, date, geo/location

Chad 4.26 

• the ui layout that had buttons towards bottom of screen where your thumb naturally lies
• the photo/ camera button after leaf selection vs before

After office hours with Mobile lab and Thesis have decided to explore my project’s AR side with Reality Composer / Reality Kit + SwiftUI.

Since travel is limited could test with family in TN also by emailing them the image targets and testing the app via Testflight. Could test UI aspects with Sketch +InVision, and have a link that leads to a clickable playtest version ❤

This week now that some of the quilt patchwork and embroidered targets are done, revisiting the interaction and experience. It can be easy to fall down the rabbit hole of learning a new tool or software. A common question in past office hours whether with Nien, Sarah, Marina, Rui or Ilana has been less about how to make it work technically but to focus more on conceptual side and storytelling.

For W10 I plan to focus on 1 tree interaction then moving to the others. Focusing first on the maple tree on Fairfax.

Navigating Reality Composer

After office hours with Mobile lab and Thesis have decided to explore my project’s AR side with Reality Composer / Reality Kit + SwiftUI.

Since travel is limited could test with family in TN also by emailing them the image targets and testing the app via Testflight. Could test UI aspects with Sketch +InVision, and have a link that leads to a clickable playtest version ❤

This week now that some of the quilt patchwork and embroidered targets are done, revisiting the interaction and experience. It can be easy to fall down the rabbit hole of learning a new tool or software. A common question in past office hours whether with Nien, Sarah, Marina, Rui or Ilana has been less about how to make it work technically but to focus more on conceptual side and storytelling.