Introduction

Let’s pretend you’re on your way to Manhattan to buy some new clothes. Maybe you’re looking to impress someone on a date. Maybe you need an outfit to ace that interview. Maybe you’re looking to change your style and try something new. Whatever the case may be, you know New York fashion will not disappoint.

You arrive on 54th Street on Fifth Avenue early in the afternoon. There’s a ton of different stores in that five-block radius. There’s high-end fashion retail and some typical name-brand stores. Some stores aren’t in your price range, but you might be interested in what they have to offer. You’re not sure where to shop first.  Decisions, decisions…Luckily, there’s an app for that! (student names)

The above excerpt from one of the scenarios formulated by students as part of an augmented reality (AR) project proposal explored ways mobile AR applications can enhance the fashion retail experience by taking advantage of location-aware services and electronic social networks. These applications also address other, less tangible needs, such as the sense of social happening and the excitement associated with emerging technologies.

This paper looks into ways that emerging interactive technologies are being adopted by designers and extended into the areas of tourism, education, entertainment, and commerce. It discusses in detail the project development stages and methodologies used to engage design-focused students into often-complex technological issues. The discussion is contextualized through a number of case studies of mobile and marker-based AR applications developed by students. These applications include an app for fashion-based social events that allows participants to preview recent collection additions, an info-navigational app for the High Line elevated urban park in New York City, a marker-based maze game, and an interior decorating interface to visualize various furnishing scenarios.

While a number of case studies are discussed from a developer perspective touching on technical intricacies, the primary focus is on content development, interface design, and user interaction considerations. The paper also discusses pedagogy, concept formation, and broader social and spatial narratives.

Augmented Reality Environments

AR-based applications provide an opportunity reconnect and better realign virtual and physical worlds through location awareness, enhanced data overlays, and user-focused content. Unlike more static forms of digital media, augmented reality, with its interactive and context-aware functionalities, engages users in more direct and meaningful ways. This is evident not only in academia but also, and perhaps primarily, in commerce and advertising. The interactive print approach popularized by Layar or AR Lego models[i], associated with mainstream toy products are successful because they extend the level of consumer engagement.

Case Studies

FashNYC

The FashNYC application helps its users make smarter shopping choices while informing them about the current fashion scene. Through the app, users have access to online videos from each store’s current collection, watch interviews with designers, and access garment information including sizes, colors, materials, prices, and availability. The app is geared toward those interested primarily in high-end fashion designers. FashNYC brings awareness to the fashion industry, connects with seasonal events, creates an exciting new shopping experience, and establishes a presence in today’s heightened mobile application culture. (fig.1).

Figure 1. App navigation map

While the student team developed a fully functional prototype[ii], they also proposed the next level of functionality that went beyond the scope of the class and student technical competencies. This was an important part of the overall design strategy, where each team was asked to develop the project concept initially and later rework it into a more formalized business proposal with future development stages indicated. One of the proposed features that could be implemented with Layar’s interactive graphics was garment (image) recognition.

As with any new app or a product relying on social interconnectivity and input, the key issue is to develop a critical mass of active users who would propagate its virtual life. This is a major challenge facing many new media products including an AR community like the one proposed by students. The strategy to address this impediment and help with the future commercialization of the app was to tie it to a particular event that is highly localized with a defined time frame. The student team proposed to connect it to the Fashion’s Night Out (FNO) event or the New York Fashion Week.

Highline Tour

Highline Tour[iii] is a navigational and informational mobile AR app geared toward visitors to the High Line, an urban park in New York City (fig.2). It provides users with historical and current information as well as plans for future developments. Its location-aware functionality allows for sorting and positioning data in relationship to the urban context. It shows year-around activities with imagery of various plants and foliage reflecting seasonal changes occurring in the park. Users of the app can look at a particular section of a project and freely navigate through historic photographs and future proposed designs.

Figure 2. Highline navigational AR app

The Highline app utilizes a Layar AR browser that is available for most mobile platforms. After initial time spent on understanding Layar SDK environment, students focused on gathering geo-location data for individual points of interest (POIs) and setting up online databases. Since this particular section of the course was made up almost exclusively of architecture and design students, teaching faculty had to provide initial help with basic PHP programming and MySQL database setup.

Augmented Interiors

A case study to be discussed in-depth in final paper (fig3).

Figure 3. A student working with a marker-based AR application

The Maze Game

A case study to be discussed in-depth in final paper (fig.4).

Figure 4. A student interacting with the Maze Game

Class Observations and Lessons Learned

AR technology is entering a new stage where it is no longer the domain of technology-oriented individuals with heavy involvement of computer programming and other software tools. Products such as Vuforia, Qualcomm’s plugin for the Unity3D Game Engine, delivers a highly functional tool that can be easily integrated into academic teaching and professional practice.

The choice of a game engine like Unity3D further makes the commercialization of AR technology easier and more imminent. The ability to integrate physics and other modules already existing in game engines simplifies the development process and reduces the need for technology savviness from the creative team. This does not mean that the development is completely effortless as far as coding is considered—scripting is always required for effective game engine implementations—but it significantly eases the learning curve, leading to democratization of digital creative tools.

This transition from technology heavily involving tools to designer-oriented technology was visible in class projects with over time, shifting from Processing and Flash-based development environments (Interior Decoration and 3D Maze projects) to Vuforia and Unity3D. This directly facilitates the content and the user becoming the primary drivers for the future of AR. This also suggests that the climate is ready for design schools to embrace AR technology as a new creative and information visualization medium. Through the AR projects and courses discussed above, students are becoming aware of new modes of visual and data-based thinking. Concepts such as location and context awareness form an important framework for dealing with the over-supply of information and navigating the current, almost ubiquitous data jungle.

Conclusions

AR-based applications increasing occupy an important place in branding/marketing, tourism, education, and many other parts of life. AR has brought the virtual and the physical world closer and made them highly interconnected and interdependent through location awareness, enhanced data overlays, and user-focused content.

A number of the AR applications discussed here exemplify an idea of “learning anytime, anywhere,” which builds on Weiser’s proposition for the role of computation in the 21st century [Wes1991]. This new role synergizes key characteristics of AR environments that include location awareness of data sets, always-connected networks, and the ability to superimpose images of the physical world with interactive digital graphics. It allows for passive as well as active interaction with information and virtual content. Users are able not only to visually experience static information but also to interact with data in more dynamic and speculative ways by posing “what if…” questions. These speculative investigations create an environment of increased user engagement with the benefits of experiential learning.

[i] http://www.metaio.com/customers/case-studies/lego/

[ii] Link will be provided here after the peer-review

[iii] Link will be provided here after the peer-review