My Experience at Brighton’s Big Digital Fair
Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality & Accessibility
Brighton Digital Festival is an annual event which, described in their own words…
“…Celebrates the richness of the creative and cultural industries in our city and explores the ways in which digital technology continues to shape our lives and our thinking”
The first major event hosted by the festival is the “Big Digital Fair”. A day long community event showcasing digital business, digital making and arts from across the city.
I, myself aspire to get involved in the UK’s thriving digital community. So, wearing a shirt that I spent nearly 20 minutes ironing (I’m learning), and carrying a handful of freshly printed business cards, I attended the event with hopes of meeting some of the community members to learn what I could about the state of the industry.
Here is how it went…
The fair was hosted on a Saturday, during the sort of wet and blustery afternoon you’d expect from a coastal town in mid-October. Upon stepping out of the rain and into the strikingly vibrant host building known as PLATF9RM, I was greeted by the friendly faces of Judith Ricketts’ AR team.
AR Project with Judith Ricketts
Judith Ricketts is an artist, researcher and visiting lecturer at the University of Brighton. She had attended the event to showcase her project to provide a dynamic and educational method of community tourism via a mobile augmented reality experience. Though I did not have the opportunity to discuss the project with Judith herself, I did get the chance to talk to one of her team members about their experience with the project.
This experimental project used in-browser, cloud-based software to showcase an augmented experience on your mobile device with no prior download or application. The project functioned via a website, visited on the users phone, and used posters, decorated with artwork produced by local artists, as environmental triggers. Judith created a vast range of augmented reality experiences to answer the following questions…
· Which forms of augmented reality media are most stable within the browser?
· How well can user’s mobile devices render the augmented experience?
· How large should the poster’s QR triggers be for mobile cameras to register them correctly?
The answer was complicated. Each program had its own strengths and weaknesses. None were able to host display the entire augmented experience effectively. To remedy this, Judith combined a number of different programs and hosting platforms to achieve stability. Though this was highly complicated on her end, the end result was effective and the vast majority of users were highly impressed with the results.
View her work at lovespictures.com
The Living Coast Undersea VR Experience with KP Projects
Second on my list of experiences at the fair was Living Coast Undersea VR. KP Projects have created a living and breathing environment set underwater in the Beachy Head West Marine Conservation Zone.
The initial feeling of awkwardness, induced by wearing a clunky blindfold in front of a queue of strangers, quickly dropped away as this engaging and educational experience began.
Much like my VR project Ocean Protectors, that is seeking to engage children in keeping our beaches clear of litter, the designers at KP Projects have discovered that Virtual Reality is the ultimate empathy building tool.
I had no idea of the scale of biodiversity in our local ocean and neither had many of the participants in the promotional video below. But in the 10 minute immersive experience I had become aware of a completely new environment, discovered at least 10 new species, encountered the dangers that they face, and learned of a number of actions I could take to protect them.
Accessibility of Digital Design with Legal & General
Legal & General attended the event to advocate for accessibility in in digital design. Here they presented their four main guidelines for optimised accessibility.
Perceivable- Ensuring legibility of content for those with visual disabilities. This involves maintaining strong contrast between the content and background. Ensuring continued legibility through the various effects of colour blindness. Describing all images with simple captions. Maintaining consistent spacing between text.
Operable- Including support of in-browser accessibility tools such as focus, or external tools such as keyboard only browsing. Organising the site with clear headings and matching link text to the beginning of the accessible name.
Understandable- Maintaining consistent navigation and identification. Clear and concise copy-writing that uses simple sentences and bulleted lists. Following design guidelines for usable page layouts.
Robust- Ensuring the web site is built using clear and robust code that specifies the name and role of components, so that it is simple for developers to navigate and is usable with assistive technologies.
So What Did I Learn?
Although the technology behind augmented reality needs significant improvement before it is embraced by the average user, it is moving forward at a rapid pace. With the potential of in-browser use on the horizon, AR experiences will likely become a significant tool in the customer experience.
When used in the right circumstances, no experience encourages engagement and empathy like Virtual Reality, but getting the average user involved can be exceedingly difficult.
Optimising for colour, contrast and font size, are common practice in Ui and branding design, but it is easy to overlook accessibility practices that are less visible to the average user. Following an accessibility checklist from the early stages of the design process, rather than adapting a final design, would go a long way to ensuring better usability of all users.
Overall, Brighton Digital Fair was an engaging and educational experience. I’ll be back next year (whatever the weather) to see what 2020 has to offer.
