Augmented Reality and Spaces of Belonging
With the advent of Lockdown in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen a disruption in the way that we live out our everyday lives where the calamity that is 2020 has forced us to migrate to the online sphere. Social settings are not exempt from this as communication takes place primarily via social media. As part of the Good Neighbours Project we have come together as students of the University of Johannesburg to find solutions to this problem.
Target Audience — Young music lovers and music festival enthusiasts between the ages of 16 to 28
Inspiration — We got our inspiration from the Fortnite concert which took place online and was created by Epic Games. This live concert involved avatars of the audience as well as the artist Travis Scott interacting with one another for a dynamic and immersive experience.
Thus as a solution we decided to venture in the realm of Augmented Reality to add a new spin to this experience. The reason why we created this online platform is to make it easier and fun for teenagers and young adults at home to be able to enjoy a concert with their friends while still abiding by the Covid-19 restrictions set in place by the Minister of Health. It is like a way of partying but in the comfort of your own space. This does not only curb the spread of the virus but also protects people from any possible dangers that they experience on actual concert and even those who are underage can attend without getting into trouble. The importance of this is also to influence the growth of augmented reality and remind music lovers that there is more to life in a technological manner than sitting at home waiting for the virus to be cured and the lockdown to be uplifted.
Belonging and Alienation — During this pandemic, a lot of teenagers and young adults have not been able to interact with each other and socialize. This is the stage in our research where this community is impacted severely, and they are left feeling alienated. They feel lonely, stressed and upset for being unable to interact in the way they are used to with friends in their lives. The reason for the online platform is to create a sense of belonging that all these people in this specific community are craving to gain satisfactory results. This will allow the users to interact and to create an atmosphere that fills in the gap of not being able to physically socialize with their friends. There is no limit on the concert seats, as many people as possible can attend and no one will be left out. There is joy in interacting with your friends as well as strangers. The site will make it easy for people to feel like they belong by allowing users to search for their friends and also sit next to them. In this way the users can still feel connected and also feel like they belong as they will be close to their circle of friends.
In this project we have decided to create an augmented reality concert experience called ENCORE, where users who are young and missing out on musical events during this Covid-19 pandemic can enter an online platform where music concerts will take place. The users will be able to interact with their friends and others who participate in these concerts.
The users will be able to interact with their friends and others who participate in these concerts. They will establish this by communicating with their friends, looking around to see all the other avatars. The augmented reality concert consists of interactive game features which will be available in the objects around them. The whole purpose of this platform is to bring together the community of diverse music lovers. There will be different artists, with different music genres who will be performing on the augmented reality stage will be live with a green screen behind them. The users will be able to interact with the crowd by being able to make their avatars jump into the crowds similar to moshing, there will also be other interactive aspects which include whistling, head banging, clapping, voice cheers that users can choose from and more.
The whole purpose of this online platform is to help the target community to keep that sense of belonging that they all so deeply desire during lockdown. Another sole purpose of this is to keep the entertainment industry alive, even though our specific target is the music lovers but it also helps the artists grow and make a form of income too. The users will gain that sense of belonging by ‘attending’ these concerts with their friends. For the users who do not want to listen to a certain artist, the platform will have a waiting room where the users can go to until the artist that they like performs. This is done to avoid the users from doing impolite to the artist that will be performing and to avoid the crowd from fighting.
Much like Snapchat and Instagram filters Augmented Reality bring together aspects of the real world and the virtual world together. In the case of our online platform the artists will be performing in the presence of a green screen to allow themselves to be projected onto the virtual concert setting much like the 2020 BET Awards. On the part of our target community they will have their faces projected onto their avatars via their phone, tablet or laptop camera (they can turn off their camera if they desire). As an additional privacy setting users must personally allow strangers attending the concert to interact with them.
The Final Product
Reviews
“The website is quite exciting and fun to play because it helps you to exercise and enjoy the artist’s songs and you get to be in a place where you feel special like never before because you get to choose your favourite music and artists and you get to listen to your favourite songs. With this website during lockdown I give it top rates because it is really exciting and it involves the usage of technology since we are heading to the 4th industrial revolution”-Anonymous
“I think that the the virtual argumentative website is very creative, in the sense that the user is allowed to fully control his/her experience. Thus bringing a taste of reality. However I think that actual human bodies would make the experience even more fun.”-Anonymous
Project Overview
Group Members:
Emma-Hellen Senwamadi — 218019308
Mahlatse Tlhako — 218019947
Kodi van Vuuren — 217020072
Sandile Zwane — 215039307
During the course of this project we worked together in a such a way that we maximized the potential of our design solution. We all took part in the research, applying our respective knowledge of Human Centered Design to come up with various versions of our product before settling on the final outcome.
