My own personal exploration into augmented reality with Apple's ARkit and Unity. I will be placing my own design learnings and notes here.
During the initialization phase, I noticed most people spawn my holograms up close, without realizing its size. This would often catch them off guard. In most cases, it would force them to take a couple steps back which is not ideal. What if they were already up against a wall, or in the worst case, step back and accidentally trip over something behind them?
My solution was to put in a holographic preview to give them an idea of the size and placement. This lets users know what to expect and the amount of space needed for the experience. It’s a small thing, but it’s something I hope to decrease frustration.
ARKit, in its current state, is restricted to a small field of view. It’s like looking through a small window. Should a user ever turn around or move away, it can be hard to retrace what they’re looking at. To account for this, I mocked up what a visual indicator in AfterEffects of what it would be like to leads users back to the main content.
In this exercise, I wanted to be able to place my characters and control them in a real world environment. This involved creating UI that allowed me to spawn the tempuras, move them through a joystick, and perform a set number of actions.
Lil' Tempura waving at you in Setagaya. Unfortunately the occlusion doesn't work as well when I try to move the camera to the side.
A family of tempuras passing by one of my favorite cafes in Shibuya. I was amazed that it was able to track the different levels of planes.