Team Omega Ω: Giving feedback with augmented reality emotes
Hello from Team Omega Ω, we’re back with our 3rd sprint post.
Sprint 2 recap
Last sprint we asked ourselves
“How to improve the campus experience of HvA students by showing them the available spaces in the buildings?”
where we researched about similar smart campus projects, conducted many in-depth interviews with students to get a clear view of who they are and what their pain points were.
The main pain points were:
1. Students don’t know where the available spaces are within the building.
2. A safety problem where students do not want to leave their belongings unsupervised when they must leave for a few minutes, so they seek places with familiar faces.
Based on research, we created a representation of Mapiq’s heatmap with LED lights that indicate how busy it is on a floor. The prototype could be placed at the entrance or elevators of one of the HvA buildings to create awareness for the smart campus application.
Sprint 3
“How do we playfully engage students so that they can give us feedback on their use of space?”
Based on last sprint’s review, our client (HvA Facility Services) specifically wanted a tool so students could give feedback rather than creating awareness for the smart campus app. So, we decided to make an AR Evaluation Game where students give feedback with AR emotes.
How it would work in practice is that you have a QR-code in a study space that you can scan with your phone. Then, it prompts you to download an app to give feedback. Within the app, the student answers feedback questions with emoticons.
For example, we tested the app at the open day on 3 November 2018 with potential students where we asked ‘How are you enjoying the open day so far?’ and they could answer with a happy emote, an angry emote or a crying emote.
Open Day
Our test results from the open day were:
- It was hard to engage students without asking them to test the prototype.
- Biased feedback by our team standing around the prototype.
- Augmented reality (AR) is not self-explanatory for everyone. Students from the IT-department might know how it works, but students from the fashion department have less experience and knowledge about AR.
- Emoticons-only are not detailed enough to get feedback. It also makes it difficult for the HvA Facility Services to gather feedback and do something with it; if they only receive ‘angry emotes’ for a particular room, what could they do to improve it? There needs to be specific feedback.
- We need to trigger students to interact with the prototype instead of just looking at it.
Next steps / Sprint 3 review
After the open day we were discussing the incentive; how can we motivate students to give feedback? We considered giving them free coffee as a reward. We also contemplated on whether we should expand our current AR prototype or go in a new direction. The reason is because each of us have different ideas on how to gather feedback. So, we considered to work on our concept and prototypes individually. In the last week, we will get together and combine our ideas.
Our client gave us insights about how we could phrase the feedback, so it could apply to the new building.
Our product owner also mentioned that giving people rewards will significantly help to get more responses.
In addition to creating a tool where students can give feedback, we should also think of ways where students are motivated to give feedback repeatedly rather than it being just a one-time response.
The Digital Society School is a growing community of learners, creators and designers who create meaningful impact on society and its global digital transformation. Check us out at digitalsocietyschool.org.
