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Matariki AR Earth Element - Minimum Viable Prototype

Another playtest of our experience, with the different functions and features working much better than the previous iterations. This is the outcome that I’ve managed to produce in the end.

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Studio Sem 2 - Weekly Progress

Week 8: Blog

Working on improving the scene of our prototype.

Week 9: Blog

Producing a “how to play” scene to guide users seamlessly into our AR experience.

Week 10: Blog

(dev phase) Fixing up on the interactions part of our app, to allow users to interact with the different objects in our scene.

Week 11: Blog

Re-shuffling components in our scene, to produce a a minimum viable product of our app prototype.

Studio Week 10: AR Matariki - Interaction phase

Earlier on in the dev phase, I was struggling to program our app to have a touch interaction, so that the player could pick up the rubbish objects and throw them into the bin. However, after a couple hours of experimenting and trial and error, I was able to setup a function that could allow an object to be dragged and dropped.

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Studio Semester 2 - Individual Reflection/Contribution:

Reflection:

For this semester, I felt that there was a huge learning curve that I had to undertake in getting familiar with the user interface within the Unity game engine. In addition, compiling and testing code that sometimes didn’t work, and trying to find alternatives, meant that I spent countless hours experimenting and measuring the limitations on what our miro workflow presented. In terms of what could be realistically achieved and what had to be re-evaluated, was the fact that some components couldn’t be added or implemented the way we wanted, so we settled on the most minimum viable features. A prototype that was still functional and playable as a result. This was the ultimate goal in terms of overall development phase. However it was still important to communicate it in a way that was intuitive to our target audience and external audiences/stakeholders etc. Hence why the different iterations, user player testing were important and getting feedback about our app was important to inform me and my group in navigating the development of our MVP.

Contribution:

I wanted to assist in the game dev phase, as I am passionate about the interaction side, and wanted to explore more in-depth my passion for the game design area. Furthermore I was using Unity game engine in my elective paper which was about creating synthetic realities, and I wanted to see how I could transfer those skills / knowledge that I was gaining from that paper, into our main studio paper. This saw me creating components, functions and features coupled with the 3D models imported from and sent through from our 3D modeller, Tim, Into our unity scene. I’d then begin to bring all the parts together and run the unity scene on my phone, to begin the augmented reality experience. I think overall I really learnt alot, and there was much to take away from this project, that I’d hope to implement in future projects. I think this is just the beginning and I’ll look forward to seeing how I could further progress my passions into game design, UX, 3D modelling and immersive technologies in later projects down the line.

Studio Prototype - Playthrough test

After a couple hours of compiling code and setting the different elements of our scene up, I went ahead and play tested our app to see what the user experience would feel like, and performed a little play test of our in app experience.

Studio Week 9 - AR Earth level tutorial: How to play

Creating a "how to play" scene for our app's experience, so that users could have an quick and intuitive understanding of what they need to do and how to play our game, before it begins.

Studio week 8 - Develop Phase

- Reflecting on feedback / applying feedback

- Further developing our prototype

- Selected the first element of our Matariki experience (Earth element) .

Studio Week 3:

User AR environment scan tutorial guide:

We want to quickly guide our users Into activating the game by giving them a short video tutorial guide on how to scan there enviroment, and setting up the AR scene. Basically so that users are familiar with what requirements are needed to create the scene in order to begin the experience.

- We want our experience to be a room-scale size of about 2.5 by 2.5m as the boundaries in which the experience will placed within

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Studio - Individual Reflection/Contribution:

During this semester, I wanted to develop and deploy my capabilities in a few disciplines that would help develop our studio project. These skills that I decided to focus on building were 3D modelling and game design coherently.

In the first few weeks of our semester, our group and I began to visit an external tech company, called SkillsVR, who could help us develop our project. The company was exceptional in working with us to understand the beginning phases of developing an app, in several steps, through flowcharts. Even giving us examples as to how their team runs through their app experiences. Helped us build a greater picture of what we would want the experience to look like. We had occasional back and forth visits with the company which helped give us better insights into how we could also approach the creation of our app. This external industry support was informative in helping us better understand how creative tech companies in the industry perform and how we could draw from those different classes and expertise into our project. The timeline of the project below;

Week 1: Timeline research planning

( Link to post here )

Week 2: Skills-VR visit

( Link to post here )

Week 3: Studio AR tutorial Placement

( Link to post here )

Week 4: Mapping flowchart

( Link to post here )

Week 5: SkillsVR visit (revision Paul lead designer)

Our group and I had a second session with SkillsVR’s lead designer, Paul, who gave us his professional inputs and opinions on our miro flowchart that we had so far. The basic feedback that he gave was along the lines of keeping a simple and clear flowchart for the modellers and artists in our team to follow with. In addition, we wanted to hear his ideas on how a professional designer like him might further develop our flowchart experience. This gave us some really interesting insights as to how alternatively our group and I could go about developing our app’s experience. Which expanded our minds abit, giving us alternative options to approach our apps development. Ultimately we decided to stick with our own internal approach as we were clear with what we wanted, however the options and feedback that we were presented with still good as it show us a example of how a professional would design this app experience.

Week 6: Critique Feedback

The main take away from this critique session and the feedback recieved from our lecturer was; “Sticking to one element (Earth element) as the timeline for completion is limited”. Taking this into account, our group and I have delegated our efforts into building a prettier looking Earth element experience.

Week 7: Refine Research

Continuing to collect research material to complement our project

Contributions:

General Contribution:

- Assisting in developing a clear logical flowchart that represents the user experience of the app, and building a flowchart for a specific element of that user experience.

Individual Contribution: What was I delegated on for this project?

- Mapping out a timer experience for our in-game experience

- Mapping out water element (Waiti / Waita) experience

- Creating prototypes to the water experience

- Getting in touch with an creative industry’s company, visiting SkillsVR getting insights into how they operate.

Skill Evaluation:

3D Modelling :

- I had a few practises in blender to attempt to create a whirlpool

( Link to whirlpool post here )

AR content (game design):

- Getting familiar with AR foundation

- Using unity I attempted to import the whirlpool as a prefab from blender, and create an XR experience from it.

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Whirlpool animation in blender:

- Experimenting with the geometry nodes system in Blender to create fantastic material animations like this Whirlpool.

- I aimed to implement this into one of our scenes within the Matariki app, using Unity game engine.

- This will be the main setting of the Water stage - Waita/Waiti.

- Objective is to clean up and clear all 15 pieces of rubbish that spawn around the edges of the whirlpool under a time limit of 60 seconds.

- The pieces of rubbish are programmed so that they orbit towards the centre of the vortex, where they will drop into and respawn back into a random spot around the edges of the whirlpool.

- The player uses a reticle ray-cast to pick it up?

- Alternatively the player uses a net-catcher to pick up the pieces of rubbish. (Proximity sensitive).

- Once collected, object disappears, game updates and shows the pieces of rubbish left to collect? (e.g. 14 / 15 pieces of rubbish left

Notes:

- (Model a net-catcher in Blender?)

- Add bonus points system?

“Incentive to make the player do better” AKA completionist

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Studio Week 4 - Miro Flowchart Building

- Miro gameplay breakdown

Time evaluation mechanic;

- A timer mechanic will evaluate how well a player has done in each stage and grade them a score.

- After completing all 3 stages, the total evaluations of each stage that the player did will be tallied up and this will produce either a good outcome, average outcome, not the best outcome or bad outcome.

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Studio week 2

- What we wanted to come out with at the end of this semester

- Defining roles and interests (Decide phase)

Another session at skillsVR looking at our game framework and breaking it down into different stages.

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Semester 1 - Week 8 Blog: Income Statement + Cashflow for Creative Cultures:

Cashflow Statement:

Income Statement: 1st Quarter (of the year)

Back in Semester 1, I developed a hypothetical cashflow and income statement for Creative Cultures, to build scenarios of what the financial strategy of our startup could have looked like. I’d set the minimum amount of funding we’d need for our startup to $60,000 NZD. Our Cashflow identified our bottom-line as being in the red for about 3 months, before we’d break-even, as we expect sales to increase exponentially. This was supported by our income statement which showed the amount of customer’s we would acquire over each month of the quarter. In this case the income statement therefor helps validate the cashflow and forecasts our budget for the whole year.

#ENTR680

Studio Week 12 - Brand logo Progression Pt.2.

Experimenting with CC and the message of “Linking”:

Trying unconventional ideas and testing them.

Testing a completely different angle:

I sought to develop our logo of Creative Cultures further by designing different iterations that encompass as much of our brands core values and colour schemes as much as possible, within each logo design. Each progressive iteration has a slightly noticeable design, while recycling the same colour palette and experimenting with different ways of projecting those colours of our brand. During my testing, I’ve experimented with different alignments and positionings of the letter ‘C’s” of “Creative” & and “Culture” because I wanted to see how I could carry the message of ‘linking two different worlds and realities’ together that associate with our tagline; “Bringing the old to the new”.

Additionally I looked at emphasising on our guided framework of “Te Whare Tapa Wha” to inform what our motif would stand for, and express that in the intricate design narrative with the font, & on its own.

Monochrome Logo:

This inspired me to create a 4 element pattern design that associated with the four pillars of the ‘Whare”, as depicted in this example above.

Motif / Motive:

Keeping it simple, minimalist look, but try and tell a story

Motif with 2 C Shapes represent Creative Cultures

Looks like a couple of sails on a yacht (for a modern connection) or a canoe or waka (for ancient connection) referring to the tagline “Bringing the old to the new” blowing in the wind giving movement or momentum or sense of doing – with the black lines which we can see – referring to real life doings or experiences – and white lines or white space wrapped around the sails or through the sails – referring to unseen ie augmented reality flowing through real life experiences

Using imagery : Why are the white lines on the sails downward?

Imagine the sails on a windsurf with a windsurfer on the right hand side holding onto a boom moving through the water, while Maui on the left hand side of the sails using his lasso that he used to catch the sun, catching the sails… simultaneously, going for a ride

#CTEC607

Studio III - Week 12: Branding Logo Development Pt.1.

Creative Cultures colour scheme: (Inspired by the Lotus Flower)

Hex/ RGB numbers used:

Pink - #E93A9B (RGB = 233 / 58 / 155)

Purple - #BA199B (RGB = 186 / 25 / 155)

Dark Purple - #7F0065 (RGB =127 / 0 / 101)

First row:

Tron like patterns to for the word “Culture” using the font “Skinny”. The word “Creative” uses the “acme” font.

2nd row:

Incorporated a background into the logo

3rd row

Added contrast and a rounded boundary box to the logo

4th row

Changed the font of the word “Cultures” to the font “Alien Encounters”, to give it a ‘Tron’ like look. The black and red combination represents Te Ao Maori colours within the logo. I changed the colours of the middle letters within logo to show contrast.

With the emphasis on the letter ‘U’ to represent our most important clients, stakeholders etc, who is the center of Creative Cultures.

5th row

Including the “C” inside the other “C”, while deeming it the focal point

6th row

Using a different hue - purple: BA199B, avoiding plagiarism in style design

7th row

Linking the “C’s” within our logo to represent our tagline which is to

“Bring the old to the new”.

Also:

- Both C’s represent the linking of two groups, as while as two contrasting realities (I.e linking the virtual world with the real world.)

- Both C’s also express another form of linking, which is the relationship between teacher and the student, and vice versa.

- Both C’s also link the unknown to known, in other words linking knowledge that you didn’t have before, to linking the knowledge that you have now.

All of this falls under our overall branding and our values.

#CTEC607

Studio - Week 12, Branding: Vision Board for our Logo

For the development of our logo I wanted to amalgamate a collection of images that would deem relevant to the context of our framework “Te Whare Tapa Wha”, and the four pillars of the whare. In addition I wanted to procure the images of futuristic patterns with our more culturally native patterns of Te Ao Maori. Given the tagline of our brand is to “Bring the old to the new”, I wanted to explore using these different images of different chronological times and ages to visually emphasis these traits that would make up our logo. The genre of the futuristic images used within this vision board was based on “Tron”, while the native indigenous looking patterns on the right of the vision board were based on Te Ao Maori.

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Studio III - Week 12: Branding Defining Core Values.

Identifying Brand Values, Mission & Vision:

Case study: Amazon

I decided to conduct a case study on Amazon and identify the branding principles of Amazon by categorizing each criteria under branding, and fitting the information that best aligned with that criteria within Amazon.

This exercise helped guide me in identifying & developing my own principles that would best fit our brand at Creative Cultures.

Defining Values, Mission, Vision:

To further guide me in developing my branding values, I found a branding anatomy template that allowed me to analyse existing principles which gave me an idea of how mission, vision and value statements are written. I then proceeded to reanalyse those same principles but rewrote them in its opposites, which informed me of its negative consequences.

Analysing our values - Do The Opposite: