Augmented Reality

I'm curious about design in emerging technologies so I've been experimenting with Unity and AR. This is a project that I created in a workshop to learn Unity and familiarize myself with designing in the XR space.

Planning

This game uses three simple principles: plane detection, object instantiation, and collection. A plane is detected by your phone's camera, and then an object is created by the program above that plane. The object falls down to the plane and is collected by the user, or else destroyed when it touches the plane.

Before having the objects instantiate and fall, I experimented with placing objects within the environment first, without plane detection. The "collection" aspect of the game also had several possibilities. These included shooting, dragging a basket, or tapping.

Catching Kittens

The objective of the game is to catch the falling kittens by tapping them before they hit the plane. You start off with a health score of 20, and lose a point for every kitten that falls and hits the plane. If you catch a kitten, you gain 1 point. The game is over once you reach 0 health points.

What I Learned

Usability in the AR space is new and exciting because it has many new design challenges. The designer must take into account issues in the technology and how to convey them to the user; such as encouraging the them to move around with the camera before starting the program or helping people troubleshoot their experience if it doesn't work properly. Thinking about space in AR is also a fun problem because sometimes making every element 3D isn't the most usable experience. Knowing what gestures are easy for what actions and how big your field should be are more common considerations when designing for AR. These are just the tip of the iceberg for design challenges in AR and the emergence of this space for practical applications is something that I am very excited about!