Creative @ultra-oh-carol - Tumblr Blog

I've decided to write all my posts in a google doc for now. Will post the Links below.

Synthesis

My understanding of synthesis is how we could improve upon the given product. I'm not sure how to continue with the synthesis so I have come up with a brief blurb on what I could write about.

This product is amazing, it's a new way to solve the losing key problem but it still has the same problem of theft. How I would add on would be to disconnect from the phone, as not everyone has phones and they can be stolen and instead use swipe keys that are in the form of rings or something much harder to steal.

So when you use Bluetooth keys you can just swipe your hand. You can still have the keypad to unlock for others with tempory codes but for you to just swipe your phone is a huge security risk.

I would use pre-existing designs to influence how I quilt my ‘ring’ key.

Im stuck at this point and will wait for more direction before continuing my synthesis formative.

#ctec702

Emerging Practices – Evaluation

After thinking about my Analysis I came to relise that I ‘may’ have done it wrong a little. I feel like I Analysed the video more then I did the product.

Revisited analysis: While revisiting the analyse I have created a few questions that can help with my evaluation.

-Why does this Technology exist?

-Who was this product made for? (I made some educated guesses but would like to explore this)

-Does this products user interface work with the audience?

-What impact will this product have in the wider world?

-Is it safe to use?

Image is from Alfred main website, the first look.

Evaluation

Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory Phenomenological assert that obtaining an accurate knowledge of another person requires understanding how that person experiences the world. We cannot ‘trust’ unless we can experience them. So for my evaluation ill be exploring how this product ‘would’ work, how anyone ‘could’ use it and explore any other unknown elements I did not find out in the analyse. To explore this Ill do some low fidelity prototyping where I ‘acted’ as ‘Alfred’. I was the owner of the house (space) and got others to use their phones as a blue tooth tempory key, gave others a number for the keypad and asked others to try and asked others to try and gain entrench to the ‘house’ during this time.

By going back to the ‘butler’ days where there was one person in charge of who entered a house theoretically made low fidelity testing easier. While I would theoretically know who had access to the ‘property’, if they have the correct entry requirements then they could ‘come in’.

Doing this I can answer some of my questions. I can find out if this is a better version of a lock and key (as that's all it is but the key is digital.) If this product works then people can start to integrate more with technology which will have an advanced way on how people look at there technology . As a phone would be so many people would be much more ‘protective’ of them. The test will also test out not only the safety aspect when it comes to people have the right code but how easily it would be to steal access to the house. There are a couple things I would test out another way, like the audience or interface just. If I were to the prototype I would build a model and print out the look from the Alfred website and create a low fidelity prototype where I can test out peoples thoughts out the look and interface.

To playtest this prototype I would first test how well the prototype works in Studio with people between the ages of 18-23. However, as I think these are not the age range Alfred was built for I would then take the prototype downstairs to the general public of AUT where most ages are 18-25 there will be those who are older and a larger range of people.

#ctec702

Emerging Practices – Analyse

Alfred here

For the Emerging Practices formative, I've decided to look into Alfred. Alfred is a keyless ‘smart’ deadbolt lock, that believes in using technology to make life at your house safer and easier. So you can be ready for anyone: guests, tenants, family members, tradespeople - even at a moment’s notice. He’s always standing by. (https://alfredinc.com/)

Above image has been taken from Alfreds Kickstarter video (0.23)

Analysis

The video starts off with “I have always been a symbol of status and luxury” which makes me think they want people with Alfred to think this is an item to show class and wealth. The name Alfred could relate to Batmans’ Alfred who was his loyal butler and the man in the video is a ‘butler’ is trying to convey that you could be rich and admired like Bruce Wayne. The video then states that it's not practical to have hired help like Bruce Wayne but you can gain the same statues with this product, “But today it's not practical to hire help to simply open your door”. They really try and appeal to peoples associations with status symbols. They again say the word LUXURY, “that's why I have relocated some of my magical charms here, Alfred brings the luxury of doorstep service into the modern world” and talks about Alfred in a way that sounds unbelievable and like its meant to be. Using MAGICAL CHARMS make it sound like it could be in another world where the same rules don't apply, but the statement “ the modern world” makes me think they are targeting older people. They use terminology relating to wealth status symbols which older generations have a better appreciation of, they make it sound unbelievable and that it will solve a lot of problems, which they don't state in the beginning, that you never knew you had. They then use the word gizmo when relating to a ‘modern servant’. We still don't really know what Alfred does yet and have to wait till 0.48-seconds into a 1: 59-minute video where we start to find out that Alfre is a keyless ‘smart’ deadbolt lock where you can use your phone to unlock your door.

They talk about using pin codes, blue tooth keys, time restraints and keep track of every lock and unlock, showing off the many ways of using Alfred to the viewers with visuals and narration. They really sell their product in this section, as they have some upbeat music in the background. around 1-minute in the ‘butler’ says you can keep track of every lock and unlock while a teen sneaks in the house. This is another indicator that this product was made for an older generation.

He gives a little laugh after this happens, not his first or laughs little snide moment and you as the viewer start to relate and connect with him and want to understand more. The character of the ‘butler’ is very demurring and sarcastic which you start to then relate and connect with him and want to understand more about what's going on, he gives a little laugh after the teen goes inside and it's not his first nor last laugh in the short video. You start to get an understanding of how much like Alfred the butler really is.

His little laugh at the scene after the teen gets in trouble.

They then talk about the ‘care taken’ about the ‘safety’ and ‘convenience’. They use three phrases here and all appeal to there audiences, their fear of safety is triggered, there concerns on how much thought was put into a project and if they could use it with ease. they are saying Alfred is easy to use and there should be no safety hacks. I feel like this part is really stateing home who this is for, people who don't have time or patience to learn how to use Alfred, how it works won't matter as long as it does to the audience as well. With an image making it seem as user-friendly as possible it seems, easy.

Image of Alfred, not in use or anything happening to it.

In the end, they bring home the wealth and statutes symbol Alfred is by talking about enhancing the look of your home and how safe it is to protect your ‘wealth symbols’. They start using words such as outstanding in describing features to make them sound grander. At this point the music also gives way to a crescendo, creating a climax in the ‘story’ where we find out the ‘best’ features. By this point, it goes downhill when he states, all of this and more, which means they don't know the end game of this product and don't know where it could head.

This image is showing the ‘best feature’ while the music crescendoed.

Why does this artefact exist? what is the purpose?

This product exists to offer a technical way to unlock your door, it plays off a keypad entry but with your phone. You can now use your phone to do mostly everything so why not unlock your door with it. I believe that they just want to follow the trends of one thing in your pocket, I think its a very good idea. I think that an older audience (28-35) is their target.

#ctec702

As a group, we have decided to work with Wiser. Wiser is a group run by AUT student services who run workshops throughout the semsters about well being and developing ‘you’.

Wiser Space in WZ building AUT city.

We are working specifically in creating an interactive tangible design for there decision-making workshop. They are in the process of making a brief for us and will send it through so we can get a better understanding of what's needed in the design and technical details.

In the Wiser Space AUT WZ building, showing off where the ‘Pods’ will be.

We analysed the site using layers of butter paper to see how everything is set out. We discovered that the Wiser Space, while is one space in the photos, can be transformed to have three pods which the workshop we are working for will have the pods set up. We analysed where lighted would be coming in and where the sound will be coming in through speakers compared to outside noise.

The next steps is another meeting with them this coming Monday to hopefully discuss the Brief (which we still don't have) and other questions with them. We are also going to try and pre-book for the decision-making workshop coming up.

#ctec703 #InteractionAndPlay

Talia, Vaani and I have decided to work as a group were we have an opportunity to work with Wiser thanks to Talia, who has a project with Wiser at the moment.

We are going to work within the realms of there Dissicion Making workshop.

We will be having a meeting with them and will see how that goes. We hope to have a brief soon and work on that. Soon we will be doing the site analyse on the Wiser space, WZ building AUT city.

There page at AUT here

#ctec703

Where to find everything post.

Documentation link here.

Reflection link here.

Blogs are under the hastags

#ctec708

#Locked

#ctec708 #Locked

Short Reflection of the Night.

During our showcase, we had our Demo VR going on and two videos (below) along with a wall full of processes. To set up our wall we printed all the process we could and set them up in a way it wasn’t in people’s faces and they could look if they wanted to. During setup, we noticed that we didn’t have much to place on the wall and while we did have our physical documentation on paper, it wasn’t refined. So, what we did was remake our physical documentation into new refined documentation made on the web. ** The type of people we had was aged between 13 - 27, this was great as our main target audience was 18-24 which as a large chunk of our participants for the night. We didn’t expect our project to be so popular, I was thinking that we would have to get some classmates to play so people could experience what was happening without getting in, but we were barely free the whole night as the only time we had it free was when we were changing users. It was great to see all types of people to play, we had a couple kids play (we didn’t get them to do the survey, they just wanted to experience VR, not our phone data) and seeing how much fun they had was worth not having someone who would give data. During the night we were ‘cable managing’ (where one of us would make sure the users didn’t have to worry about tripping over the cable, so we would hold and ‘dance’ with the cable) and when a user was taller we would have to dance like a monkey to keep the user from tripping. The showcase/playtesting night was so great, I wouldn’t wish to do it any other way because we were collecting data and data comes from failure. I do wish we could have had more people though

Video links

These are the videos made from the recordings. One is our main video where it dictates what our experience could be.

Edited by Traz.

This video is a blooper for our recordings.

Edited by Samy.

Images

Our Final Wall Setup. (Without Ipads)

Our Final Wall Setup. (With Ipads)

Some Documentation that was on the wall.

A Group Photo where we all have cupcakes (Thanks to Smay)

VR in action (outside)

VR in action (Inside)

VR = Virtual Reality

#ctec708 #Locked

This is a photo dump

Charina, Traz and Samy have made the final rooms that will only be used in the video (so I don't need to add too many VRTK things as they only need to walk around not interact within VR). While they were building these rooms I was busy adding all the sounds and their correlating scripts to activate them and making sure everything worked for the showcase as I have many things due Friday I won't have tome to in the last week to do work that's left.

There where four more rooms made, three transition rooms and one ‘main’ room. These rooms are the starting of the ‘Crazy’ detective storyline (which is something we don't show in the main VR experience.) Rooms start mixing up in the detectives head and going through them all you then next main room where the new puzzles would start if the game wasn't a demo. Now that these rooms are made we can do the final recording. Which Samy was or actor as Traz was sick that day. During recording this time I decided to name all the videos so that the editors don't have check each video individually like before.

This room represents a mix between the base room and kidnappers room, its the base roo without chairs or desk items. It contains the shadowy figure in the corner and a RED folder in the drawer instead of the original one. The girl's red ribbon is also ontop the box that would contain a phone.

This is a mix between the kidnapper's room and child bedroom where everything removed but the base room and all the toys are added onto the floor. The green journal has also replaced the red folder containing her kidnapping information.

This room is only a bare version of the kid's bedroom. There are no toys, no books or shelves... even no shadowy figure. There a new note asking if your home and the red ribbon is in the centre of the room instead of off t the side.

This is the new main room, the interrogation room. On the side your aloud on has a table, chairs and note asking if this is the man. It's dark and red with security cameras one of the only detailed aspects.

Interrogation room orthographic.

The other room (the room you can't go in) it's a two-way glass meaning he can't see you but you don't know that. There a teddy bear on the table representing the little girl.

As we didn't have an end, I created a room where no matter what door you pick in the kidnaper's room you end up here. It's less jarring to the player to not just be told that the end.

We also had an amazing one of a kind playtest done by the one and only by our lecturer Laurent. Instead of plying through like we thought he would, he decided to try and break the game. It was so fun to watch this and it brought back te thought that the showcase playtests won't be filled with people who know what to do in VR. So we tried to fix all the bugs we could, fix all objects so you couldn’t break them. We had a few more people play test and try and break the room and fixed that mistake. We are so glad that our lecturer playtested because it brought forth what could have gone wrong on the showcase night.

The plans for the next steps of the project are getting ready for open studio night...

VRTK = Virtual Reality Tool Kit

#ctec708 #Locked

Nearly at the end but are we going to be done?

This is a photo dump... Beware.

This is the physical box in making

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Above is an image of what OBS looks like while recording in unity.

We have started the ‘recording’. We are checking what recording will be like by doing a pre-record. We haven’t finished the rooms just yet but only need to add a few things so from Friday to Monday we will be fixing our rooms and recording Monday afternoon. We have decided while playing in VR through unity we are using a software called OBS.

We have the box in each room, but we didn't think about the box in the real world and for the test, in each room, we have to recalibrate where the boxes in position in the real world. I will have to fox this by either fixing the rooms in unity by rotating them or changing the boxes position in each room to be the same in the real world.

We use the VR remotes to calibrate the boxes in VR.

________________________________________________________________These are the finalised Rooms, their textures, their models. This is it as we have all moved on. Im fixing interactions and adding sounds while the rest of my group is working on videos and surveys. But for the time being, we will be recording.

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This is the Base Room and its many views.

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This is the Kids Room and its many views.

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This is the Kidnappers Room and its many views.

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During Monday and Tuesday afternoon we recorded the first three rooms (Base, Childs and kidnappers). This worked as the last few days we’ve made sure the chest and puzzles are all working (which they are). We’ve made sure all notes (instructions) are added and correct(ish).

Traz was ‘actor’ for the main three rooms and the pre-recording.

As recordings kind of started the plans for the next steps of the project are finishing recording and getting those videos fished. Make sure everything is working and just bug fixes.

VR = Virtual Reality

#ctec708 #Locked

Nearly done?

Our branding and its upgrade.

Art by Charina.

This is our little girl design, she wears the red ribbon that will be found in the kid's bedroom.

Art by Charina.

Since the mid-term break, we have modelled all our models and Samy has textured most of them. have a refrnce list at the bottom of all the modles we gather off the internet from TurboSquid.

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Below is an image of our first puzzle on the wall VR experience. This was just colour coded for poeple to expeirnce wothout doing in VR.

Below is an image of the key to unlocking the chest puzzle. Its a snap to spot (where the blue key goes into the pink highlight and it ‘snaps’ into place.) At this moment, the key just snaps into place and does not unlock the chest. The chest also does not open and am trying to find out why. It worked for a little while and stopped after a group member updated in Unity so, we have to find out why.

At this point, sounds haven't even crossed our mind. So we have asked Charina to compile sounds into the group google drive ready to add to unity and the video when needed. Talking about the video, we want to test shoot soon as we have all the textures in and all the puzzles work.

Everyone doing there works and just trying to get thongs done such as the rest of the models, adding textures, making sure everything works with VRTK and getting the art for the rooms ready.

_______________________________________________________________

I did some Play testing in VR by myself. I got a few people to test out the puzzle rooms, and other VRTK specifc areas.

This is the textureless puzzle pieces snapping into place. These pieces haven't been snapping correctly into place (they are too small for some reason, have to look into VRTK forums). There are two pieces they can snap that are found in the toy chest underneath a pile of toy models I found at TurboSquid.

Toy chest with the key. one problem I noticed was people tried to put the key into the chest, not the highlighted part.

Above the blue box represents the phone box where players would keep their phone and touch physically there.

The playtest below was one of the most informative. We had a player not do as we expected. This user after finding the key and opening the chest decided not to grab the puzzles by sit ‘inside’ the chest and set up a bar scene within the Chest itself with the toys.

This is him ‘sitting’ in the chest, which I notice he lifted his legs to get ‘in’ even though he knew nothing was there.

The otter was barkeep in this image.

This photo is as he sits inside the chest.

He's clipping but this didn't seem to affect his play experince.

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This is Traz trying out a Phygital aspect, using a chair in the real world to mea=cht up with a chair in the game. It was a great idea that we wish we could have implemented, however, we needed to figure out how we could use the VRTK tracking software in the short amount of time that we had. This idea while amazing, we simply had to do.

These Drawers took a few hours to get working. Traz and I worked hard one afternoon trying to get these working. We noticed when one would use physic to come out the other stopped working, we didn’t know why and couldn’t control why. VRTK forums and the Slack channel didn’t have any information about this problem and we guessed this was because it was a simple fix. We eventually figured out why, but it took a few afternoons of time we could have spent doing something else.

Below are a series of images of the ‘textured’ rooms. These aren't finished yet but they are stated.

We are talking about changing the kid's room wallpaper as Traz and I think that all these pink diamonds are making the room to busy.

Traz has made a shadowy man for the child's bedroom. Something we wanted as part of our concept but didn't know how to achieve this.

The purple table cloth is a little jarring in the kidnapper's room as it's only meant to be on the ray scale and RED. I am thinking about changing the curtains to black for the same reason as the table cloth.

After looking at what we've done and what we still have to do, we are nowhere near done.

The plans for the next steps of the project are recording, and still finishing the puzzle VR aspects as they aren't working.

VRTK = Virtual Reality Tool Kit

VR = Virtual Reality

These References Are From The Models I Got For Free Online That We Are Using In Our Project

3Din (2019). free tennis ball 3d model. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/671852 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

3dthings (2019). beach ball max free. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/586038 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

8angrywolves (2019). free golf trophy 3d model. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/896773 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

arsa35 (2019). free obj model toy fox. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/1066268 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

de Mravi (2019). Free 3D stan lee - TurboSquid. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/1348558 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

Denzer01 (2019). Free medal honor 3D model - TurboSquid 1315770. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/1315770 [Accessed 20 Jun. 2019].

konast (2019). 3D old ussr radio low-poly model - TurboSquid 1288804. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/1288804 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

Lurisay (2019). 3d kids father strength. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/880248 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

PovtCoder (2019). pokeball 3d fbx. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/1059689 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

Ready_3D (2019). Free 3D colored pencil model. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/1257602 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

realcapri (2019). spectacles max free. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/443167 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

RenderStuff (2019). free basic toy 3d model. [online] Turbosquid.com. Available at: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/726055 [Accessed 20 May 2019].

#ctec708 #Locked

Back and going hard

So Traz and I (mostly Traz ) have blocked modelling the three rooms. I have been getting the VR specific objects ready for the real models.

The above image dictates the First model of the kid's bedroom, where we modelled it and got the chest working in VR. The chest it turns out is very hard, it won't work and I've spent a long time trying to get it to work. At the moment im using VRTK example chest but when we get our model of the chest I will have to make it work from scratch in VR. There are no tutorials about this so im not hopeful

In all rooms, there are blue boxes which represent the ‘phone box’ which is our (at the moment) only phygital aspect. We have a ‘bookshelf’ in each room and these are indicators to the type of person whose room it is. In the base it's full and large, n the kids it's small with fewer books and in the kidnapper's room it the locked cabinet that's full of bad things.

Below is the Base Rooms block modelled.

We have a door and a green exit light.

Desk with a pin board above and bookshelf.

A window that leys in a blue light like in our concept designs.

Below is the Kidnapers block modelled room.

There are two doors in the room, one where you can exit the room.

The other door will not be able to be opened and will have sounds behind it indicating that there is a child behind the door. Sounds such as laughter and cartoons. As there is no room after the kidnapper's room in the VR this would be where you could progress in the experience in a full game and will be where we progress n the video. But for now its the ‘end’.

There's going to be a red light outside that makes a sliver of light through curtains that shine on the red folder book which indicates it's his room/the girl is here/its happened before.

Below we have the kid's bedroom block model and starter models.

This is the outside of the kid's room.

We have the bed, the shelf and a chest window and cardboard all ready for us to replace with real models(from Traz , Samy and I).

This is a Teddy Bear we wanted to place in the room, its meant to signify a child large toy (comfort) but with bandages to show that the girl isn’t ok.

Traz also models a chest for the group. This will contain Puzzle pieces hidden by toys that you need to solve a series of puzzles to gain access to.

The narrative is complete.

I talked to my group and they seemed to like the idea of a slightly crazy detective. So I made the premises that his daughter was kidnapped long time ago and he's reliving it in VR.

I made it start with the 3 bedrooms as normal but as they ‘forget’ their phone the VR starts breaking where it changes and mixes the three bedrooms and goes through the mixed u rooms till it takes you to a new room. The new room is an interrogation room, where they are on one side and through the looking glass and sees a shadowy figure of the kidnappers and a little girl sitting across him.

Charina had also designed all the puzzles that I wrote about, as we had talked about them when designed room concepts.

After I had done this Charina took this and made a storyboard about the narrative. She has also made a storyboard about the experience as a whole which you can read more about it Charina's blogs.

Notes will be on various items, a lock on the toy chest, and a key needs to be found.

End Goal: Find key to open treasure chest/toy box

[First note on chest](signifying start and end of challenge): “Welcome, welcome. Take a look at this beautiful sad princess’ room. Can you see any other princesses here, hm?”

[Note found in princess book] “Poor princess is so upset in the dark. You should light up the room a bit, hahaha.”

[Turn on lamp/Another note on lap”: “The clock has numbers, right? What’s something else with numbers on it? Hurry, hurry!”

[Toy phone has key taped to the back]

[key opens lock; toy chest is opened and two ripped pieces have to be dug out from under toys]

[pieces must be held up to the picture frame (puzzle piece) on wall outside of the 3x3 interactive space to find the “house of kidnapper” to continue]

From Charina's Blog about the puzzles themselfs.

The plans for the next steps of the project are to finalize puzzles and get recording started.

VRTK = Virtual Reality Tool Kit

VR = Virtual Reality

#ctec708 #Locked

The break wasn't a holiday from Uni work but a holiday from Uni while still doing work.

During this break, I've done very little but learn how to use VRTK which was the base of most of the project. However, I’m also in charge of the video Narrative writing and designing.

The image above is ‘My Unity basic rooms.’

The image above is ‘What VRTK looks like in Unity.’

The image above is ‘What VRTK looks like in Unity 2.’

VRTK is what unity uses to build VR within. I've had to spend the last two weeks watching every tutorial available and practising in unity how to make it works. The advantages of using VRTK is it lets you develop for multiple headsets once and then deploy everywhere, it has pre-installed coding so we don't have to learn how to code the VR aspect, there is a whole community on slack that s very active and willing to help with everything they can and my favourite its FREE.

Some images of VRTK in Unity of VRTK.

A ‘Playground’ in unity.

A set of interaction in VRTK. (below and above)

These three photos above are from VRTK examples within the VRTK software.

As the group has put me in charge of the video narrative I've decided to take it to a strange place. Instead of just doing a normal detective story where its crime, clues, get the guy, explain the clues (Now Novel, 2019). I've decided to try and add some mystery to the plot by making the scenes that are not in the VR seem more like they belong to a delusional man. I don't know how im going to write this yet but I want to add more substance to our detective story and not make it simple and easy. Im going to talk to my group when I get back from “holiday” and we can discuss this and see if they like this direction of a slightly crazy detective.

The plans for the next steps of the project are to do the block modelling in unity to create mock-up scenes, get the narrative to write up finished and get VRTK implemented into the puzzles.

VRTK = Virtual Reality Tool Kit = https://vrtoolkit.readme.io/docs/products-using-vrtk

VR = Virtual Reality

Now Novel. (2019). How to Write a Detective Story: 7 Keys | Now Novel. [online] Available at: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/write-detective-story-7-keys/ [Accessed 26 Apr. 2019].

#ctec708 #Locked

There will be comments on each photo about what it is, what I like and what we will be hanging in our Virtual Reality Experience (in Unity).

Within the VR story, we have a detective trying to find a little girl (who also happens to be his daughter) starts in a base room where there will be something that tells the player about the girl and her kidnapping. We decided that even though the kidnapped daughter is a cliche, cliches work and it will work in our favour as the story will not be complete.

There will be three rooms, a Home base where payers will start and be given the storyline of the kidnapped girl. There will be the child's bedroom, which is the crime scene and full of puzzles set up by the kidnapper. Once you go through those rooms you will end up in the kidnapper's room, this is where you will find a set of objects there that indicate there where more kidnappings that this isn't the first. There will also be two doors, one were you can leave the experience and get your phone or the other where you can try and find the little girl.

Through each room there will be a blank black box, this in the real world will contain the player phone and if touched in VR they will meet resistant. The box will have a door and a lock in the real world but in VR will be as shapeless as possible.

Above is an image of our brainstorm about the Base Room. What kind of atmosphere and objects we want within.

Above is an image of our brainstorm about the Kids Bed Room Crime Scene. What kind of atmosphere and objects we want within.

Above is an image of our brainstorm about the kidnapper's Room. What kind of atmosphere and objects we want within.

Below is the brainstorms above drawn into images. Charina and I drew these so that she could draw some final concepts (Which are Below)

In the image above is both the Home Base and Childs bedroom/Crime Scene concept sketches. In the image below is the kidnapper's room sketches. We had drawn what we needed in the rooms, objects where things needed to go and why.

These are our room concept designs all drawn by Charina.

This is the Base room, we wanted the room to bask in blues to show a calmness along with faithfulness and loyalty (BAKER, 2019). We wanted this room to be messy showing a lack of care for the environment around him/her but with lots of work around showing his/her dedication to there work.

In the child's bedroom, we wanted the room in greys and pinks showing an innocent love and neutralness (BAKER, 2019). We wanted this room to look like a child had recently played inside it (like it could belong to a child). We have a juxtaposition as part of the puzzles where players will have to find puzzle pieces and make a picture on the wall, it will be made up of darker shades of green and black, dreary colours that are lifeless in images (BAKER, 2019). There will be pieces of paper or notes around that will look out of play in the child's bedroom to show these are items you will want to look at. In the child's bedroom, within the closet, we want to have a shadowy figure that means to represent the kidnapper. It will be something you can't touch but will be a reminder that this VR experience isn't just a fun thing. We also want to have a giant teddy bear to represent the child's innocents. There are a few puzzle designs but they are not final just yet, as Charina will be making sure they work and how they work. There is a Red ribbon that we are going to make represent the little girl, something she always wore.

In the Kidnappers Room, it will be mostly black and grey with splashes of red everywhere to show aggression, violence, and anger (BAKER, 2019) as red is a powerful colour (BAKER, 2019). We want the room to be a juxtaposition between the kidnapper's room and the base room, clean, not messy, organised. There will be a pile of blank red folders and one half finished one filled with images of the little girl. In a locked cabinet it will be full of folders showing he's been doing this forever and the pile shows he will continue to do this after the girl. We got this idea from a game from called Life is Strange (Lifeisstrange.square-enix-games.com, 2019) where the main character finds out the bad guy has been drugging and taking lude photos of unconscious girls then placing them in red folders (DONTNOD Entertainment Wiki, 2019).

Below are a series of images of the rooms, these are orthographic so that when we are blocking out the rooms and modelling we have a better understanding of sizes and composition.

The plans for the next steps of the project are for me to understand how to use VR in unity and then implement it into a block* modelled unity scene.

*Block modelling (in my case) is where you create the scene out of the cubes in unity to make a scene in the correct size in Unity.

VR=Virtual Reality.

BAKER, L. (2019). Manipulating the Audience's Emotions With Color. [online] The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat. Available at: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/manipulate-emotions-with-color-in-film/ [Accessed 15 Apr. 2019].

Lifeisstrange.square-enix-games.com. (2019). Life is Strange. [online] Available at: https://lifeisstrange.square-enix-games.com/en-us/games/life-is-strange [Accessed 15 Apr. 2019].

DONTNOD Entertainment Wiki. (2019). Red Binders. [online] Available at: https://dontnodentertainment.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Binders [Accessed 15 Apr. 2019].

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Concept (ish)

We have decided that within our VR, the concept will be based around a detective story.

Within this detective story, we will have the player try and find a small child that has been kidnapped by an unknown and it's their job to find out who has done it and find her.

We are undecided how the child will be related to the detective, we are going between the thought of them being a child of the detective but are unsure as this may be to clinch.

We are sure we are going to go with the child being a girl but not 100%.

We think we are going to do an escape room like experience were (in VR) players will solve puzzles to get through a series of rooms. We know we are going to have a ‘base’ room where players can get a story starter, how to use VR and a place to start putting their phones.

Going along the line of escapism and nomophobia art of the experience will be that we take their phone away and (at the moment) lock it away in a box. In doing this were hoping to distract them from there phone within VR like in the playtests. We know that even with peoples phones taken away their brains focus on solving the puzzle. I think this may be because they knew their phones are safe with us and they didn't feel the stress. We don't want people to feel to stressed in VR as we don't know the consequences of this so, we will make sure people know their phones are safe so they can enjoy there time. Part of the experience will be to get them to try and think about there phones while going through puzzles.

We will be planning out the rooms next to and know what's happening throughout the experience.

VR=Virtual Reality.

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After talking to our Lecturer Laurent we have made a few changes to what we will be doing for our final project. We talked a lot about our concept and how we did research and provided references. We talked about how we are gonna use VR in an ironic way to highlight peoples dependence of digital environments.

Laurent had his doubts, not about our project idea which he said to finalise and just do it, but about us completing a complete VR project. He suggested making a demo game plus a longer game trailer where we could show what we could/would do. We liked this idea and after a group, meeting to make sure everyone was ok with this we said yes.

What is VR (Virtual Reality)

“Consider VR not only as a technological tool but also a concept related to the power and possibilities of supporting new emerging realities never seen or experienced before.

virtual reality and immersive environments, as part of the emerging technological evolution involving our senses and cultural, symbolic and representative factors, may present interdisciplinary approaches. These approaches contribute to creating new languages, which involve disciplines such as interaction design, human-computer interaction, user experience and interface, and even affective computing, which have new approaches in recent years with the evolution of ICT. ” (Rubio-Tamayo Jose Luis , Barrio Manuel Gertrudix andGarcía Francisco García)

We have decided to use VR as our main technology as it interests us all as a group. It is also a technology that is new and exciting, we hope this will attract people to our project at the end of the year.

What is video (Game Trailer)

We decided to look at other video trailers, the best one we looked into was ‘Everything’ (OReilly and Double Fine Presents, 2019). We want to use this trailer as a big Precedent as it shows we don't have to go high tech to have a good video but have a great concept and it can work.

Gameplay from Everything. (OReilly and Double Fine Presents, 2019)

OReilly, D. and Double Fine Presents (2019). EVERYTHING - Gameplay Trailer | PS4. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/JYHp8LwBUzo [Accessed 02 Apr . 2019].

Front. Robot. AI,(13 September 2018). Why Is Virtual Reality Interesting for Philosophers? Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2018.00101/full [Accessed 02 Apr . 2019].

Rubio-Tamayo Jose Luis , Barrio Manuel Gertrudix andGarcía Francisco García (27 September 2017). Immersive Environments and Virtual Reality: Systematic Review and Advances in Communication, Interaction and Simulation. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/1/4/21/htm [Accessed 02 Apr . 2019].

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Our idea(ish) 26 march

A few of the project ideas that Traz came up with were first was putting the player through a VR escape room where the goal was to reach a black box where the player had placed their digital device in at the start of the experience. While the participant was solving the problem, ringing sounds facebook notification sounds would ring throughout indicating that their device is going off.

We placed it through our methodology and it met all the requirements, we moved onto playtesting the idea itself to make sure if that is something we would like to go through within this project. To playtest the idea we stimulated the core substance of the idea, instead of having a digital maze we acquired physical puzzles, the sounds of the phone ringing etc was stimulated by us.

After looking into our playtests, and gettings words such as nomophobia and how technology affects different types of people.

Nomophobia “Smartphone addiction is known as nomophobia (NMP) which is a fear of not using a mobile phone. More researches are available regarding NMP among the students of various professions. However, to date, to the best of our knowledge, there is no literature available on the impact of NMP on the academic performance among students pursuing physiotherapy course (SPPC)."

Smartphone addiction is a well-known phenomenon nowadays, and it is termed as nomophobia (NMP).[1] NMP is a fear of without being using a mobile phone and refers to anxiety, discomfort, and nervousness.[2,3] In the last decade, technological development in mobile phone changes the way of easy access and share information. By using a smartphone, ones can access the Internet and through it can use their daily needs.[4] Due to the increasing demand and decreasing cost, a dependency on the mobile phone is rising worldwide.[2] In 2018, 2.53 billion smartphones have been in use worldwide, and the number is increasing day by day.[5] According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 1186.8 million (Total Indian population is 1339.2 million) subscribers use a mobile phone in June 2017.[6]

(Sohel Ahmed, 2019)

How technology affects different types of people - “The nature of social interaction has changed as technological advances have provided new methods of contact. Consider the evolution from in-person contact and letter writing to the telegraph and telephone and, most recently, to ever more individualized and electronic forms of contact such as cell phones, video calls (e.g., Skype, FaceTime), and social media (e.g., Facebook). We know very little about how different forms of communication influence social relations, health, and well-being.”

“Many technological advances have occurred within the context of broader demographic changes, including shifts in mortality, fertility, mobility, and marital patterns (Bianchi, 2014). Longer life spans provide older adults with more opportunities to build relationships with younger generations. Increased mobility and migration have led to less geographically proximate family networks, posing potential barriers to support exchanges and contact. Changes in marital patterns have resulted in increasing heterogeneity of family structures. Thus, older adults today are embedded within diverse and complex family structures that shape the type and quality of their social ties. It is important to consider these new aging family forms and functions when evaluating the role of technology in the establishment and maintenance of these social ties, and how the social needs of older adults are being met through technological advances in communication. We next discuss how these demographic shifts influence patterns of intergenerational and romantic relationships, the adaptation of immigrants, and the implications that technology has for these patterns.”

(1) - Sohel Ahmed, A. (2019). Impact of nomophobia: A nondrug addiction among students of physiotherapy course using an online cross-sectional survey. [online] PubMed Central (PMC). Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341932/ [Accessed 26 Mar . 2019].

(2) - Sohel Ahmed, A. (2019). Impact of nomophobia: A nondrug addiction among students of physiotherapy course using an online cross-sectional survey. [online] PubMed Central (PMC). Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341932/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

1. King AL, Valença AM, Nardi AE. Nomophobia: The mobile phone in panic disorder with agoraphobia: Reducing phobias or worsening of dependence? Cogn Behav Neurol. 2010;23:52–4. [PubMed] [Google Scholar] 2. Dasgupta P, Bhattacherjee S, Dasgupta S, Roy JK, Mukherjee A, Biswas R, et al. Nomophobic behaviors among smartphone using medical and engineering students in two colleges of West Bengal. Indian J Public Health. 2017;61:199–204. [PubMed] [Google Scholar] 3. Yildirim C, Correia A. Exploring the dimensions of nomophobia: Development and validation of a self-reported questionnaire computers in human behavior exploring the dimensions of nomophobia: Development and validation of a self-reported questionnaire. Comput Human Behav. 2015;49:130–7. [Google Scholar] 4. Imtiaz Arif WA. Students’ Dependence on smart-phones and its effect on purchase behavior. South Asian Journal of Global Business Research. 2016;5:285–302. [Google Scholar] 5. Number of smartphone users worldwide 2014-2020 | Statista [Internet] [Last cited on 2018 Oct 19]. Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-ofsmartphone-users-worldwide/ 6. Press Release on Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report for the Quarter ending June, 2017. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. [Internet] New Delhi, India: 2017. [Last cited on 2018 Oct 19]. Available from: https://www.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Performance_Indicator_Reports_28Sep2017.pdf . [Google Scholar]

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