DES241 - Designing for Mixed Realities

I have enrolled in DES241 as I am interested in gaining more knowledge and understanding of developing and creating virtual reality and augmented reality projects. I am particularly eager for the first assignment of creating a Snapchat filter, as I am an avid Snapchat user myself and regularly use the filters available. I aim to achieve an A grade in this paper; I will do this by meeting all the deadlines, working effectively in a team, and completing assignments to the best of my ability.

This course will allow me to develop more skills in my design tool kit, which will be beneficial for future internships and jobs.

A bit about myself:

I am a second-year design and commerce student who loves food, training at the gym, yoga, shopping, fashion, hanging out with my friends and family, the beach, and surfing, to list a few things. I identify myself as a Chinese-Kiwi, born and raised in New Zealand; however, my parents are from Guangzhou, China. I moved to Auckland last year to pursue my studies at the University of Auckland, leaving behind my parents, two sisters and a little white fluffy dog back in Hawkes Bay. I am now happy to call my home Auckland and have made so many lifelong friends and memories in the one and a half years of living in the big city. I aim to make a change in the world, big or small, with my creativity and inspiration to create a business of my own:)

Blog update - 17 August 2021

DES241 has been challenging yet rewarding so far. I successfully submitted assignment one, which required us to create a Snapchat filter on lens studio, which taught me how to create an AR filter.

This semester, I have learned from lectures that mixed realities are growing rapidly in demand throughout many industries, such as the automotive industry. In particular, Volkswagon has incorporated VR technology to help designers and engineers collaborate on car designs remotely.

Since the first assignment, I have been working alongside my team to develop our project brief for next semester's next assignment. I am working alongside Claudia, Hannah, Ethan, Dan and Ant on this project, and I have been assigned as the project manager and art role. Through collaborative thinking, we have created a project brief to educate individuals visiting Auckland Zoo on the harsh reality of the Orangutan decline. We want this AR project to make visitors aware of the effect of consuming palm oil. We also aim to engage the zoo and the Orangutan exhibit and create a more immersive experience.

The scope of our project will be to develop an immersive augmented reality experience for Auckland Zoo visitors. To solidify our project scope, we plan on taking a field trip to Auckland Zoo to explore the Orangutan enclosure and ideate what augmented reality features we can include based on the available environment.

Within now and the next blog post, I would have visited Auckland Zoo with my group. I also plan on starting to conceptualise the AR environment alongside Claudia and Hannah (the other two art roles).

Blog Update - 12 September 2021

Since the last blog update, much has changed! Uni is back online for the rest of the semester and we're all now working remotely at home. I was pretty disheartened when I heard the news as I was just getting back into the swing of things on campus; however, this lockdown is out of my control and I've learned to understand and accept it. Instead of constantly thinking about the negatives, I have put my energy into what I have control of, such as getting back into my daily journaling, long walks, practicing my yoga, cooking yummy recipes and even signing myself up for a half marathon. These activities have helped keep me grounded throughout this lockdown, but i do hope that Auckland comes out to Level four in the next week or two!

In terms of this paper, our group assignment has done a complete 360 as we've completely changed our design brief as it would have been impossible under Covid19 restrictions. We are now focussing on an AR experience to educate, entertain and promote the beautiful Maori culture within Aotearoa by implementing the song "Pepeha" by Six60 through a UE boom experience. We are still beginning to conceptualize our idea, but we all feel very passionate and excited about this group assignment.

During the mid-semester break, as the project manager, I was able to get all the group members together for several group meetings over Zoom to complete our second brief and prepare for our first stand-up. Within the second project brief, I was assigned to write the background and rationale, which required research into Maori culture and the importance of a Pepeha. As a group, we have been communicating primarily on Facebook messenger alongside collaborative group work on Miro. Overall, I am pleased with how everyone has contributed to the group assignment despite lockdown difficulties.

Blog Update: 26 September 2021

I have found online uni extremely challenging this time around, and my motivation for uni has slowly declined as I have been stuck at home alone for over six weeks now. Its been hard to separate my leisure and workspace, which has made it challenging to stay on top of the uni workload, which is very unlike me and has caused me to stress out. The stress started to become overwhelming; however, I was lucky enough that level three was announced and I could expand my bubble to my best friend. The feeling of giving her a physical hug grounded me again and made me realise that I am more than capable of getting through this lockdown. I woke up the following day and jumped straight into my uni work which allowed me to catch up to date and ultimately made me feel much more at ease.

I was able to use this new motivation in this paper by reaching out to my group through Facebook messenger and we were able to schedule a meeting to work on our AR environment. During this call, we were able to finalise our Pepeha AR experience by delegating each person an individual task. My role was to create a storyboard by unpacking the song's timing to figure out where the assets (mountain, ocean and waka) would fit within the song.

As an art role, I am responsible for conceptualising and designing the visuals of our AR experience alongside collaboration with Daniel and Claudia. I admit that as a group, we haven't been as productive as we had anticipated due to lockdown and the workload we have been given this semester; however, we plan on meeting several times next week to make significant progress on this assignment.

Overall, as the project manager, I feel as if I have remained a reliable and effective team leader to the best of my abilities under the circumstances; however I am determined to be an even greater leader. I will do this by always being active in the Facebook messenger group chat and letting my team members know that I am here if they need support because I know that I would appreciate it.

Blog Update: 4 October 2021

This past week has consisted of intense planning for our AR environment. As project manager, I arranged several meetings throughout the week ensuring that all team member were present, in order for us to feel comfortable with where we are at with the project as there are only two weeks left till submission.

One of the main objectives was to further develop our collaborative Miro as we had lacked visual documentation after seeing other group presentations. We felt wanted to feel organised and a way for us to achieve this was to add the work we had done over the past week weeks into the Miro. This has been an effective software as we can all work on it at different times as everyone has different schedules.

Another key takeaway from this past week was that there were no exisiting assets that were appropriate for what we were searching for. In particular, it has been challenging to find an assets to represent the lyric "waka" in the Six60 Pepeha song. We originally found a couple canoes that resembles the shape of a waka but after conversations with Emmaline, we realised that a canoe was not an appropriate representation of a waka. From then, we have been able to resolve this problem as a group and began to look into voyaging canoes. As a result, we were able to find an appropriate asset to represent a waka through collaboration, conversation and guidance from Emmaline.

Original asset to represent a waka:

New asset to represent a waka:

With only two weeks until submission of the final AR environment, I plan on creating all the assets this week in, alongside Dan and Claudia, in order to allow time for the coders (Ethan, Hannah and Ant) to piece together the final project in Unity. I will take actionable steps to achieve this goal, the first being a scheduled meeting with Allan to help assist in the creation of a mountain. I have also messaged the group chat to ask when everyone is free during the week to make sure that everyone is on the same page and to give guidance and support when needed.

Blog Update: 10 October 2021

My group and I have made significant progress this past week with developing our AR environment on Unity. We were able to call several times with the team as well as a scheduled zoom with Allan and Ben.

I had to role of finalising the assets with Dan and Claudia, the other two art leads. I also found a free sun asset that fit perfectly into our setting, which created a more visually exciting environment. I was able to import the asset into maya, where I also learned how to animate by following Ben during the zoom call. Once I was happy with it, I exported the sun asset and asset material to send to Ethan as he had the task of putting the assets together on Unity.

I plan on finalising our AR environment mid this week with all the other group members in preparation for the presentation the following Monday. We will then design how we want to demo our AR environment during the live workshop. I will also assist and support the coders (Ethan, Hannah and Ant) if they encounter any difficulties throughout the week.

A challenge for me this week was using Maya and Unity as I had no previous experience with the software. The sun asset and animation took longer than anticipated, but I'm happy with how it turned out! Another ongoing challenge was balancing this assignment with all my other courses as I have various deadlines this following week.

Blog update: 17 October 2021

The last and final week of this paper for the year! What an absolute rollercoaster it's been trying to navigate through lockdown while juggling five courses at the same time. It feels good, really good, to come out the other side with a successful augmented reality group project.

This past week has consisted of everyone in the team putting in the hard work and long hours to achieve our envisioned AR experience to Six60's new song "Pepeha." This assignment aimed to educate/ promote users about the Maori language, Maori culture, and the Pepeha. We decided to educate individuals about the Maori language and culture as it is an integral part of life in New Zealand, influencing our customs, cuisine and language in Aotearoa. We have been able to develop an AR environment; however, due to covid 19, we haven't been able to make it functionally work due to not having access to the design space. Despite this challenge, we have still created a demonstration video of what it would look like.

My role as project manager for this past week was to ensure that everyone in the group knew their specific allocated tasks. This was a matter of being constantly active on the group chat and resolving any problems straight away if anyone encountered challenges. I made sure that everyone knew that they could come directly to me with any issues, which I would try to work out, and if not, I emailed Allan or Ben. As the project manager, I also ensured that I was there for all the zoom calls with Allan and Ben even if I wasn't doing the coding work, as I needed to give my time and efforts to the team.

As an art role, I was also responsible for putting together the PowerPoint presentation and script alongside Dan and Claudia (the other two art roles). We designed the slides so that the colour, imagery and font aligned with the AR environment.

As this group assignment has come to end i have been able to develop various mixed reality skills to add to my design tool kit as well as soft skills such as team management and resilience. I am pleased with the outcome my team and I have been able to produce and I only hope to develop these skills further into this design degree. However, there are also things that I would do differently in group projects, such as evening out the workload among all group members and getting started earlier to reduce stress.

Link to final AR environment:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tScdZCp3fT_94zghzDrG_I6Y7jXCJlMJ/view?usp=sharing