Blank Is The New Exciting
| This project was done for the purpose of the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium 2019. You can find the Unity project by clicking the Github icon. -> |  |
Abstract
Imagine this. Classroom setting. The class - dimly lit for a presentation that's going on. Boring. Bland. Barren. Students half asleep. The other half clinging onto hope that it's going to get interesting. Most of the time it never does. Think about it. What would make a class more interesting? Learning about prehistoric times, for example. Would you like to read about it on slides, while a teacher stands and talks in front? Or would it be more exciting to have actual dinosaurs in the class?
Visualizing is a very important part of any industry, and Augmented Reality is all about making things visual and allowing users to see them from all angles. It's innovative and captivating to see what an almost blank paper and a device can do.
What are the boundaries of AR? How far have we come in implementing it? Presentations, CVs, maybe even movie experiences. This poster is going to look at AR, not only in an academic setting, but any presentation scene.
Brief Introduction to Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality allows users to interact with virtual objects in the real world. AR has been around for a long time, and while it has only recently been in the spotlight, it's expected to continually grow in various industries. Its infancy was brought about in the gaming industry through the likes of Minecraft Earth, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and the ever-popular, Pokemon Go.
AR at work
It hasn't stopped there. There are a few companies using Augmented Reality to advertise products, promote sales and even redeem loyalty points. These companies include the likes of Pepsi Max, Ikea, LaCoste and Pizza Hut. Between these top companies, there are a variety of AR techniques and innovative examples, like AR menus, home furniture visualizations, street entertainment, magazine visuals and more.
This project will use Augmented Reality as an effective medium in poster presentations, business proposals and in-class lectures, to enhance the attention and experience of the audience. In other words, having blank or minimal material for presenting and have a dynamic visual play with AR.
It will also measure the effect and engagement of AR as opposed to other usual or mundane methods.
Unity and Vuforia
My technologies of choice are Unity, using Vuforia. Unity is a cross-platform game engine used to build and oversee many popular games. Popular with beginner game developers for its less-to-no code environment, the game engine pre-calculates various elements in the game environments, like Physics, Character Controls and Game Object Interactions. However, complex games will always require coding.
Vuforia, an AR software development kit (SDK), allows users to work with image targets (among other forms of AR) and process and interpret the outcome accordingly. While there are other competent choices, like ARCore, Vuforia proved to be better suited for simple tasks and easy for a beginners' introduction to AR.
Design and Development
The mission is to create an engaging and interactive demonstration, attracting students and academics alike to my poster, explaining the extraordinary uses of AR. Two initial ideas came to mind when analyzing the surroundings at the event and thinking about what would complement the scenario:
➢ A1: Handheld card with a virtual hologram viewable on a phone. A card with an image target would lay flat on one's hand and a video projection, perpendicular to the card, would be displayed on recognition of the stated image target.
Image target card
This would allow the "poster" to be portable and would not limit me to standing in one place, presenting my demo to my audience. The downside to this is the image target would need to have a lot of recognizable points for it to be detected at an angle. This will reduce the quality and may cause blinking of the hologram output. However, walking around and introducing people to the idea of a Walk-Around poster could be a lot more interesting.
➢ A2: Image target pinned up on the board that plays a video on a virtual surface on recognition of the image target. This would be the traditional sense of recognizing an image and displaying the video accordingly. Furthermore, this would actually be in the form of a poster.
Image target for poster
The image target: The title of the poster. This does seem most sensible in a busy, noisy environment. Keeping it simple and reliable would be the best way to go. Depending on the quality of the image, Vuforia assigns a star rating to it. This indicates how easy it is to identify the target. A black and white image, with a lot of splatters and dots, has a lot of distinguishable features, which is perfect for this title.
The scale of the image, however, is yet to be perfected. As the task requires an A1-size poster to be delivered, the scale of the image target should be relative to the proportion. The below video shows a run of the application on my scrapbook.
The finished application working on a scrapbook/notebook
There are a few lags in between, and the virtual screen does move according to how it thinks the image target is manipulated. The preset image scale might be the probable cause of this situation.
Evaluation
At the event: BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium 2019, University of Salford, Manchester
Event poster
I have to say that there was a lot of buzz about the so-called "blank poster" at the event. People are used to sticking to the norm and creating traditional posters, whether hand-drawn or printed. I presented the opportunity to divert from this norm, expand the objective while still meeting the deliverable.
The poster itself was a demonstration of the working concept of creatively using AR to modify monotone advertisements and presentations, and it was definitely a huge success. I was able to capture the attention of students, employer representatives, as well as key speakers and academics.
Achievements
This poster won first place in the People's Choice Award category and received top feedback from students, having been spotlighted by a few connections on LinkedIn.
Check out some of the other participant posters and winners here.
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