An AR Game creates for people when they are quarantined at home
Out Door... In My House
Overview
Course
Design Meaningful Interaction, Social Research, and Design
Group Member
Tianjun Wang, myself
Case Statement
When COVID-19 comes, we are required to staying at home, We are living in a limited area and feeling isolated but lack an entertaining way to stay out of the current stress and situation. what can we do to make our life better when we are staying at home?
Challenge
Design a product that can release stress, finding a surprise, and fresh feeling when we are not able to step out of the limited living area.
Outcome
A prototype AR game that could let people interact with natural living beings.
Duration
March 2020 - Still in progress
Role of me
Researcher, idea creator, visual designer, UX design, UI designer
Issue Description
Abstract
The recent global disease COVID-19 limits the social distance of people. They cannot go out, feel tried with the same environment, lack of new ideas to develop their lifestyle. It will lead to a negative attitude. How to use technology to make people have a better feeling after a big change in their life? What do they need at home to make people who have the concern to feel better and make people who have a positive attitude to have a chance to make other people have the same feeling is the main goal of this case study?
Background
Recently, the whole world was in a severe situation, full of tension, because of a sudden disease. In this disaster, everyone's life has been affected because they have to give up a lot of things they should have done because of their health. In this extreme environment, everyone has a different mentality. In this period of time, people can only stay at home most of the time, keep enough distance between people, and all work, learning, and communication are carried out remotely. In fact, this is a good test of the usefulness of technology, so that people can communicate effectively even at a very far distance. However, although we still keep in touch with the outside world, most of our living environment is indoors. The daily activity range is bed, bathroom, kitchen, dining table. The distance is very limited, which inevitably leads to visual fatigue and even some people feel like they are in prison. Such long-term development will have a great impact on people's physical and mental development. Some people will start to yearn for the outside life, wonder what others do at home, or want to change a visual experience.
Assumption
How do people feel about quarantine at home? Are people using electronic devices or another way to make their time go faster and enrich their life? What do they need the most during this time?
Methods: Informal interview and Social Media Research
Primary
Research
Informal Interview
I called six friends who are in different places around the world. They are having different backgrounds and in different situations. I talked to them and ask questions in a casual way which may not make them feel nervous.
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Interviewees:
A: Female, United States, New York, White American, 28, Art School Teacher
B: Male, United States, Chicago, Asian Korean, 25, Intern Software Engineer
C. Female, United States, Los Angelas, White American, 27, Ph.D. Student
D. Female, China, Shanghai, Asian Chinese, 28, Editor
E. Male, United Kingdom, Sheffield, Asian Chinese, 24, Grad School Student
F. Female, United States, New York, Asian Chinese, 23, Grad School Student
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Questions:
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How are you managing the social distancing at home?
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What do you like and not like about staying at home?
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What are your biggest frustrations during this time?
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What electronic devices do you use at home? Do you like it or not?
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Questions:
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How are you managing the social distancing at home?
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What do you like and not like about staying at home?
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What are your biggest frustrations during this time?
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What electronic devices do you use at home? Do you like it or not?
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Paint Points:
- Limited active area and seeing and doing the same thing every day
- Lack of new entertaining and relieve stress methods
Isolated feeling due to the social distance requirement
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Important Quotes:
“ I feel bored”
“I need fresh feeling”
“I love to play video games because I can see the process of I gave something and getting feedback immediately, it is just like somebody give me a response, I felt good on that”
“I feel concerned about my safety”
“I need surprise, I don’t want to see this wall again”
“I feel stressed I don’t think it is only because of my work”
“I miss the park I went to when I need to take a break from my laptop with work on it”
Two maps record their activities are and their mood when quarantined at home:
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Social Media Reviews:
During the quarantine period, social media become the main way of people knowing and conducting with the outside world. They are having two sides of affective to people:
Positive Affective:
Many people are using a new method to balance their life at home. Many funny actives, videos encourage people to self-discipline when working or study at home. May new games come out? Good news and positive stories from the hospital.
Negative Affective:
The government attacks the race at will for its own self-interest, people's negative public opinion, and the increase of death rate. Worries about relatives and friends far away from home. Shortage of commodity supply.
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Conclusion:
Young people are a weak group in a city because they are staying far away from their family in these special situations. Although they are living in a safe place or with some friends it may not comfort or help them relieves the stress and concerns that come from their own work or knowing from social media. It is hard to balance their life between work and life in one place. Especially when they are seeing and doing repeating things or staying in the same area for a long time. It will increase their concern and stress.
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First Design Idea:
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Is there a good way for people have limit active space when quarantine at home to have a FRESH view?
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How can our product solve the problem that no SURPRISE in every day’s repeating behaviors?
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Is there a better way for people to have BETTER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE on the activities they have on electronic devices now?
Secondary
Research
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Currently Entertaining Technology
Interviewees had mentioned about
Video Games: Animal Crossing, League of Legends, Adorable Home, PUBG
Social Media: Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
Television: Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Amazon Video
Founds:
Infective, funny and relaxed, strong interaction, immersive, temporary stay away from the current situation, sense of achievement are the keywords of those entertaining ways.
Thoughts for Next Steps:
How should I come up with a design idea that matches those elements and can truly help people released stress?
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Relieve Stress Methods Suggest by Psychologist
With the question, I did some desk research about the professional way that could help people to develop a positive attitude. There are three resources that I think they could use on my design.
- Music - “If you’re a music lover, listen to many different artists and types of music until you find the song that instantly lifts and relaxes you.”
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/quick-stress-relief.htm
- Nature - “Spending time in nature is a proven stress-reducer.”
https://www.care.com/c/stories/5308/101-things-to-do-when-youre-stressed/
- Laugh - “It’s hard to feel anxious when you're laughing. It's good for your health.”
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/16-ways-relieve-stress-anxiety#section8
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Conclusion:
From both primary and secondary research, we can see there is some match information. Like nature, fun, and laugh. They are the information that could be the main point of my design.
From the information I have got, I made a persona that could be the target user to my design.
Persona
Detail Research
When we are staying at home, there are many activities are held remotely. Like Zoom, we use to have the class. Google came up with a virtual museum tour to make people can visit the museum virtually. Air Bnb held a remote global culture class for people to learn about different cultures. And the Zoo held a live account on Facebook to make people can see panda at any time. Remote is a good way of virtual visiting and learning, people will not stop learning when staying at home, those are the methods I could reference from. The technology Augmented Reality mostly uses these remote interactions, it can make people feel they are in the real situation by looking at their phone, which gives me a reference for my design.
Brainstorm and Inspiration
During the time of research, I watched a movie called We Brought a Zoo. Which gave me an inspiration that what if there is really a zoo in our house? And the animal is also a part of the natural. From the social media research I mentioned above, animal shelters are empty which means the animal is a good choice to accompany people during this hard time. The living environment of animals like ocean and plant place is also the symbol of natural, especially plants can defiantly give people a fresh feeling.
Then I did a brainstorm about what I can do to make people can interact with the natural characters. A friend who lives alone told me she would want to see a real person because only people can communicate with her and she will not know what he is going to do next, it can give her surprise. And when she feels stressed, people who can listen to her to talk may help her a lot to relieve stress. From what she said, I felt it is important to keep in touch with a friend and have a place to tell the stress.
Storyboard
When combining with the research result and my brainstorm, I came up with 4 functions of my design:
Nature
Base on the primary and secondary research
Surprise and Fresh Feeling
Base on the primary research
Seeing the process of giving and getting feedback
Base on the primary research
Interact with friend and get surprise from people you know
Base on the primary research, it may also make people feel happy
First Design
I want my design to look fantasy and colorful which can make people feel they are in a fairytale world. So I use blue, pink, and purple as my theme color. It is a cell phone game that targets young people so I got the reference from Instagram and some fantasy movies that young people love.
And I came up with a rough flow chart to show the process of sign up an account, log in, choose a character, find the character, talk to it and make it get the energy to grow up, and surprise friends.
User Test
I show my idea and my rough design to my user experience teacher, my friend who works in Tencent as a game designer, and one of my classmates. They gave me some feedback and I made some adjustments based on what they said.
Final
Outcome
Future Step
The quarantine makes people miss some opportunity to go to the place they are familiar with. It is including the zoo, museum, park, and aquarium. They may miss the exact animal or plant in a specific scenario. I am going to collaborate with the natural places that people are familiar with, to make people can interact with the living beings in there. For instance, to interact with a tree in Central Park. And I am going to develop more functions to make people have better a user experience. Probably at that time people are no longer need to quarantine at home, but it could provide people a new way to do a virtual tour when people are having trouble to accessing the actual place.
Spring Show
The ITP Spring Show 2020 will hold online on May 17th and 18th.
Still working on Progress.