The Next Frontier
We started our third summer sprint Monday. This week and next week, we’re refining a design and starting to build an app for Hololens. We’re getting to a place where the next steps are clear, and managing the schedule and workload is becoming more cut and dry. We know what needs to be built, but we’re not necessarily clear on how it should look or be interactive.
Test Plan
We wanted to answer some questions in order to validate our interface. Although our interface is intended for highly specialized technicians, we don’t have easy access to them. We are substituting technicians with people around Ames campus, so we’re more focused on the flow of the interface than the specific affordances in it, and whether or not they’re useful to the technicians.
With that being said, the text in a WAD is dense and specific. If we put that in front of lay users, we feel it might distract them from their task. Instead we’re substituting simple instructions, like building a foam car. That way the test ensures we get users reacting to the UI, not the dense text.
Hololens
We’ve got our hands on an available Hololens at Ames and we’ve had fun playing with it!
We’ve spent some time exploring the space of what is possible with this technology and how to build for it. The ability to look at interfaces in three dimensions opens up some design avenues, and closes others.
Hololens has a relatively narrow field of view, and limits peripheral vision. Its important to ensure that narrow field of view isn’t further obscured by invasive interface elements.
One important design consideration is the idea that elements can be either world locked or body locked. In the former, an element is anchored to an element in the world and as the user walks around, it stays in place. In the latter, the element follows the user around.
Another thing to consider with the broad space, is that one isn’t limited to a rectangular design as is usually the case. This means elements can stack and span out.
In a 3D space, left and right stacking is just as opportune as up and down stacking.
With the new design opportunities comes limitations. For instance, gestural scrolling up and down can be very daunting in Hololens. Instead, its favorable to design elements that scroll left and right.
left to right scrolling is easier in Hololens. Elements can be designed to support that.
Tribal Knowledge
Technicians tend to know a lot, but often times its stored in their heads. What’s written in WADs is generally what needs to be build. However, much of the nuance and craftsmanship in the process of assembly is open ended. It’s often a matter of technician craftsmanship. Meanwhile TOSC, the contractor who does much of the building and assembly, is hiring many new technicians. Meanwhile they’re losing some of their veteran technicians from the Shuttle era who have a depth of knowledge about how to perform certain operations.
When people know a lot about a process or procedure, but it’s not documented, we call it tribal knowledge. A major goal of this project is to make such tacit knowledge explicit.
We’re getting deep into the space of what’s possible while also ensuring we’re solving the right problems. Meanwhile we’re moving quickly and starting to build this app. We’re eager to see our project come to life.
Until next week,
Team C-137
