Creative Workflows Reflection
It has come to the end of a long 12 weeks of creating this “mixed reality arcade” this has been a journey that has took a lot energy mentally, physically and emotionally. To begin my reflection I had to start at very beginning of this project, this is understanding the mindset. I started this project coming from a failed “semester” in my eyes, this was when I realised I had no control of my life and how it was going. This caused a lot of physically and emotional distress which was kept inside. My final semester work was not what I Imagined and this disappointment in myself caused me to look at myself and try understand what went wrong. The looks and words that were spoken that night at the exhibition lingered in my mind and telling myself its okay. When I realised I had to repeat this semester this made me break down, this was my lowest point. I feel coming into the semester this mindset played a major part in achieving this project. I had come in to prove myself to everyone I can do better, this is where I went wrong. This drive was good but this openness was not there, I had changed as a person. When taking this paper I wanted to prove my worth to my own lecturers this ego that was fuelled through outside influence of you’re standard is above average but you produced average had become noise in my head. When starting creative workflows I wanted to work hard and create work that my lecturers will be proud of. These lecturers had become friends over time and I had let my friends down. This was my mindset, I started working on multiple forms of my creative workflow. I initially thought this was the way you work in a creative way to achieve you’re goals in a given timeframe. I was excited to learn and absorb as much as I could in the time I had left at university. Being this ambitious young individual I wanted to create the next best thing, with this understanding I had not visualized the amount of time I had to create this project. This caused unexpected many down hill trends such as unity crashing and multiple times starting again. I was not prepared for this as I could not imagine these things ever happening. First mistake I had made was not getting the year planner earlier. This would of made my productivity level increase and the visualisation of my intended project earlier. The second problem I found was I was scared to admit my failures or what was not going right through my process, I feel I needed that satisfaction of being “right” or “I know” that, which caused mis-communication in communicating with my lecturers. With this understanding below are my: limits, contingency, risk, time, redundancy, stress testing and my understanding that we don’t live in a perfect world. In my mind I had imagined weekly updates of what I created would be my creative workflow. This overall process has taught me fundamentals that I am going to take when creating my next project. A structured plan, better understanding of things that could go wrong, time management, more time in stress testing and having a contingency plan if funding was needed for the project.
Aim:
My aim for this project was to create a awareness of “ The great pacific garbage patch” using mixed reality technologies such as “Augmented Reality” and “Virtual Reality” in a sustainable immersive and interactive experience.
Research: Research played a big part in my creative workflow, this was done through multiple ways such as journal articles, websites, books and events. My initial research started when I visited Motat, when I was there many inspirations had fuelled my project which in this stage was vague. The idea collective at Motat had Augmented reality projects, eye gazing technology games and arcades that had games made by students. These types of work had build an interest in things I wanted to explore. With this initial view I started looking into design and reading a book called “design matters”. In this book it talked about where design was heading and what was needed to create design that matters. A topic which interested me was experience design this was the idea of how a user or participate experiences design using the five senses. This caught my intention more when I visited Noel Lemmings the following week and they had a new “Apple” display. The way it was created using aluminium framed structure projecting a digital printed canvas light box with wooden furniture holding devices. In this furniture it had glass inserts where they placed their iwatches, the rectangular space had carpet around the whole display with a TV projecting a scene of New York. This experience it created immersed me in their environment and everything else became less important. The research journey had taken more time than expected which was due to always developing my project. I would keep researching ways in creating a better experience but this ending up taking time take could of been spent working on building my project. The ideas were generated through understanding what is currently available in the market today. My research developed better understanding of the technologies needed to create my project but my creative plan was being altered as I spent more time learning about the technologies. I felt this would not be hard to implement when understood better but reading about how to do it and actually doing it was a whole another story. Even Though I was tracking how long I was research for it took more time to understand and implement.
Testing: The part of being to optimistic about the knowledge that I currently had was a major part in the testing phase. This was due to thinking that my previous knowledge about a augmented reality project would be beneficially in this project. It was to an extent but working to create virtual experience which I did not have much knowledge around made me spend more time in learning the tools then actually building and testing the world. This was backed up with trying to learn C sharp which was the coding part of Unity. My design and visually aesthetics were created using illustrator to show how this world would look and operate which can viewed on my tumblr. The understanding of how each component would work in steps but when trying to code this was a whole another ball game. Learning and trying to create or find code that works with my vision made it difficult in building my VR world. I made 10 different versions of my Virtual experience, but everything I ended up trying to run it, it came up with compile errors which the script that it was looking for did not exist. This caused frustration and stress which made me re-start every time. When doing this I had let the stress get the better of me and my planned time frame.
Limits: Its very important to understand the limits when creating a project in a allocated time frame. When creating this project I had limit time, funds, space and resources. These were my main parts which needed to be address on a daily basis. Time had been the major factor which initially I was on point, with my plan to create this project. The part when it started going downhill was when components of the project took more time then projected, The estimation I had did not encounter “other” factors which would contribute to the project. These factors were knowledge limitation, other projects which needed attention, software crashing and limited man power. Another part was funds, initially I had set up a way in which I would be able to fund my project by working on a certain day. I worked on that day, but the pay was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances on the employers side. This delay caused my project to lose time, which in this case was most important. My initial idea was much larger and when talking to Clint I realised I needed to re-design my installation. This resulted in more research into looking in alternative ways in creating the same immersive experience. I solved this problem by using a arcade style design which worked well when creating the installation. Finally resource, I had solved this problem initially when researching sustainability. I wanted to build something that uses throw away materials such as pallets, plywood, tyres etc. This was more to understand the importance of sustainability but also how to create value for a throw away item.
Contingency: This is probably one of the most important things which I considered in a very shallow perspective. In saying that things that were unforeseen had a major impact in creating this project. While working on this project I had left enough time if anything happened but the unforeseen multiple effects caused this project to delay. This was things such as having funds to pay for my leap motion controller which I thought I would be able to fund it by working on a particular day and get payed the following week but the employers, not being able to pay til the following month. Another part was learning enough to build a virtual experience in the given time frame, In theory I projected enough time but when practical practice came it fell behind. When working on this project, my group(4 people) project ended up falling behind because of my group members (2 people) who had not finished their part. This caused delay in finishing my group project and also my personal project. I had assigned certain work to be finished on a given date which was not completed and I and another member had to finish.
Risk: The risk in this project in the beginning was projected in my head as achievable and low. As research and development started the understanding of the amount of work needed to complete this project was high. The possibility of the project being completed on time became reality when unforeseen circumstances started occurring which caused the risk to increase. Even though I understood this was going to be the case when creating this project i felt I should take the chance and take the risk in developing this mixed reality arcade.
Time: This was the most important factor I wanted to control, through-out the process I had control over until things started falling apart which I did not have control over. Also spending time watching youtube videos and searching the internet for content was a big part which created a delay in development. The part I felt strongly about was the multiple ways I figured out to do task much faster than expected. Through this process I discovered the skill of implementing different methods to do similar task which usually take a longer period of time. This created more productive days that is going to be beneficial in the future. While working on the virtual experience, I repeated task multiple times to a point where it could be achieved in less time. The method of having a diary was a strong and effective way of getting things done. I had a physical and digital form of a to do list. This notified me on things that I forgot to do on a daily basis. When working on a project that has a lot of work to be done time catches up much faster than expected. With this observation in future projects I will use a method called G-Sprint which can be read about in my tumblr post.
Redundancy: The part in which redundancy is concerned, lost time was one of the major factors because ideas were bigger than initially expected. This caused a lot of time being wasted on things that could of made the process faster. Another aspect was the leap motion which had become a redundancy when I realised that I would not have enough time and money to purchase and implement. This is more of a additional need which could be taken out and the system would still work.
Everything falls apart: This part is best to understand when everything does fall apart, I knew this was a factor which I had previously experience in my other projects. In my initial plan I had two weeks to fix anything that could of gone wrong. In this project a lot of things went wrong and fell apart such as engraving spelling, Augmented video not being available on unity indie, Virtual experience crashing and getting compile problems. This was a big part of understanding even when everything is perfect a week ago everything can fall apart. This made me understand that be prepared for unexpected things falling apart when you least expect it.
Stress Testing: Finally, stress testing or testing my stress. This project had a bit of wave structure through out its journey. I tested each part out before getting it ready for the colab studio. The arcade was left outside on a stormy day to see how long it would last, it broke which i fixed the following day but realised needed stronger screws. The AR/VR world is currently still in progress my AR part works how I wanted but my VR still needs components to create the message or awareness I wanted to explore. Currently I feel letting the audience interact with my prototype of the mixed reality arcade can create better understanding of how I would develop this project further.
All ideas, inspirations, research and designs stated is in the Tumblr page.
