Kiosk+Print+AR Project
The Problem
We worked as a team to create a cohesive and exciting group of projects related to the topic of Greek gods that we could share with others. This project included a way to bring all of the information together so that people could understand and enjoy using a kiosk, a print aspect, and incorporating augmented reality.
Objectives
1. Touchscreen Kiosk
2. Print experience (posters, trading cards, puzzles, pamphlets, etc.)
3. AR experience related to your topic
4. Work with English students who create the copy
5. A final product that incorporates all of the experiences together cohesively.
The Process
At the beginning of the project, the first step was coming up with an idea for the project's base. Kylee Apple and I came together as a group and devised the idea to base our project on the Greek gods. However, we could not fully finalize that idea because we were working with an English class at our college to flesh out our project fully. We met with the English students to pitch our ideas with two ideas in mind, Greek mythology and Mario the Nintendo franchise. We ended up in a group with two English students and went with Greek mythology.
By creating mind maps, we fully fleshed out our topic, including the audience, the tone we would take, and the specific part of Greek mythology we were going to focus on.
The mind map helped us finalize the topic of the Greek gods and teach those at a younger age about the mythology and stories around eight individual gods: Hera, Artemis, Apollo, Hermes, Athena, Prometheus, Kronos, and Nemesis. The English students began their work of writing the copy with research, and Kylee and I started working on the wireframes.
The wireframes were quick and simple and underwent a couple of revisions. The main portion of the revisions concerned how we would display the page with the information on the gods.
With all the ideas we came up with, we decided to go with the style of the ones circled. So, for each idea, we needed God cards to rotate through on the main screen, icons for navigation, and a title section. For the information page, we needed the name of the god in fancy lettering, a scroll that could be movable, the Greek god’s profile or body, and their temple and symbol. Kylee created all the images and textual assets for this project.
After Kylee fulfilled her graphic designer role, I began animating and creating the interactions within Hype 4. For the main part of each interaction, we needed the god cards to rotate on the home page and the scroll to move up and down with the text. I accomplished both and had a lot of fun figuring it out. The kiosk was achieved with a minor adjustment, where their symbolic animal replaced the temple.
At this point, we began thinking of the print experience and using Kylee's already-created god cards and a map still being worked on; I started to work on the AR aspect of the project.
Using Zap Works, I began to study and figure out the interface. We had already decided that the print experience would be a matching game. You match the god card to the point on the map. With that in mind, I began coming up with the simple way that you would match the god card with the portion of the map. Since symbols for each god had been used in both the kiosk and the print experience, I combined the symbols with the AR experience. For Apollo it was either a wolf or a lyre, Artemis it was a bow and arrow, Athena was the owl, Hera was the peacock, Hermes was the caduceus, Kronos was a scythe, Nemesis was the balance scale, and Prometheus was a fire. I chose the wolf for Apollo and made the AR file the sound of a wolf. The goddesses Athena and Hera also got the sound of their animals. Artemis got a 3D rendering of a bow and arrow found in the 3D assets provided by Zap Works. Hermes, Kronos, and Nemesis were the other gods who got a 3D rendering. Prometheus, the final god, got a video from YouTube about his myth. To tie them all together on the map, I added PNG images of each symbol and wrote a brief description of how you would play the matching game.
Outcome
Below is the AR and Print experience.
Below is the Kiosk Experience.
What I Learned
How to work with a copywriter, the fun and benefits of AR, and creating more interactions in Hype 4.
