Y1S2InteractiveProjectCathedral Buddy Proposal

Colby, Will, Fiona & Hayden

Content Written By PageIntroduction/Team Members

Fiona 3

Time Mangement Hayden 3The concept Colby 3-4Software Will 4Target Audience Will 4Research/USP Hayden Yau 5Design Fiona 6-7Conclusion Colby 7

Index:

2

Introduction:

For this project we have been briefed to design an interactive app for Winchester Cathedral, our team has decided to try an augmented reality application for iOS and Android, as these are the main two contenders for Phone Software’s. Overall we wanted our App to be functional, interactive and interesting along with educational.

Team Members:

Project Managers – Colby & FionaHead Designer – FionaDesigner – Colby Developers – Will & Hayden

Time Management:

To manage our time we have created a Gantt chart to display the tasks we have to complete for each week.

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4Group CreationIdea brainstorming

ResearchAssign Team RolesPresentation for early ideas Written ProposalDesign the application interface Finish final visual designsDevelop the applicationProduct testing Final pitch presentation

The Concepts:

We shall be creating two companion products that both work with Virtual Reality within the Cathedral. Both will be under the name of Cathedral Buddy.

3

Our main product is to be a virtual guided tour around the Cathedral. As you walk around the cathedral there will be points of interest where customers can scan a code with their phone and a virtual tour guide will appear and proceed to speak to you about the Cathedral.

Software

Regarding the software choices for this project, there are a number of different avenues we could take. Our first thought was to use an application called blippbuilder to produce effective and simple augmented reality for our Cathedral Buddy app. Blippbuilder is a tool kit produced by the company Blippar, who specialize in producing augmented reality adverts for various big name brands/companies. We decided it would be a good idea to contact blippar to see if we could use there dev. kit to help produce our project, and to our surprise they invited us onto their Blippar pilot programme. Whilst we are still unsure as to whether the end product will be made using the Blipp builder, we feel it is a good asset to have just in case other routes aren’t as effective.

With two developers on the team its important they both agree on what programme/software to use, and the most popular choice seems to be using Unity 4 with the Vuforia. Vuforia is an augmented reality dev. kit that can be used as a plug in for Unity 4. Unity is a piece of software that both our developer have has experience with and seems to be the most logical solution to the brief we have been set. It acts in a very similar way to the blipp builder, but with a larger focus around the development aspect. With our Development lecturer ready to teach us the basics of Vuforia in the coming weeks, it is likely this will be our software of choice.

Target Audience:

Our chosen target audience was young people, more specifically between the ages 10-15. This would mean making the app engaging and as fun as possible, without compromising the aim, which is to educate and inform. Some of our early logo designs featured a very youthful and modern feel. With clean bright colours and a soft font, we felt this would instantly appeal to young people using the app. However we also have to keep in mind this is an app for a Grade I listed building, so it needs to be in keeping with the history and feel of the Cathedral. With this in mind we have decided to use old style fonts for headings and logo's, and have a more modern, easier to read font for the mass text. This way we'll be presenting the app in the right way, yet still keeping it easy to follow and aesthetically engaging.

4

Research - The Cathedral

Before the process of planning and building the app, we needed to find out what was available and what wasn’t available. This was necessary so we could create an engaging heritage experience with only the tools we have. We visited the actual cathedral to research on this and we found out a few important factors we needed to keep in mind of:

Cannot stick anything on to the walls Slow/bad internet No plug sockets Certain parts of the cathedral blocked

As well as looking at the availability of things we could use, we looked around for certain features of the cathedral in which we could focus our app on. Originally we were supposed to focus only on looking at the crypt but from our research we found out that it could often flood, meaning it will be difficult for us to create an heritage experience of the crypt within an app. To solve this we decided to not only focus only on one feature but several, and as explained in the app concept we will create an augmented reality experience which will give a brief history about the certain parts of the cathedral. Some of these will include the Chantry Chapels, Antony Gormley Sculpture, Jane Austens grave and many more...

Research – Inspiration

We have looked at other apps or websites to see how they created their own heritage experience. One inspiration is an augmented reality app for ‘Union Station’ which is a tourist spot located in the US. The app has also inspired us with design - it uses colours and fonts that results in a historic theme. But the use of augmented reality is what inspired us the most. Nowadays teenagers are familiar with technology, and most heritage apps we looked at has not used augmented reality to engage with the audience. Some of these include Westminster Abbey and even the current Winchester Cathedral app. This is the reason why we plan to use this technology as it will differ to how our audience will usually experience a heritage interpretation. With the Westminster Abbey app, we were again inspired by the visuals. The appearance of it is very simple and doesn’t look too flashy which is to again match the historic theme. The app engages with the audience using audio recording for certain features of the heritage. This has sparked an idea for us to combine the augmented reality with audio.....

Unique Selling PointThe augmented reality would be the unique selling point of our app. The main reason for this is because many other heritage apps don’t use this technology to

5

engage with their audience.Concept Sketches/ Storyboard

Initial Designs

These are the initial designs for the use of the app. The pictures are first hand with Photoshop edited on top of them. These are designs of how the app will look when it is in use, you open the camera within the app to view the image, when the image is hovered over it is ‘scanned’ and the 3D model pops up on your phone screen, you will have different cards for different sections in the cathedral and from each cards different pictures and models will appear and from there will be different voice overs and sections for the different areas.The cards will be available at the cathedral to buy/pay for a deposit for the cards, which are in order and then you are able to walk around the cathedral with them and you will get a guided tour with 3D holograms and voice over.

The logo Designs

For the logo designs, I wanted to have the outline of the cathedral in the background, which is what I based the idea off. After feedback from the initial presentation, it became clear that we had to make it

6

more sophisticated and professional because the age range we are aimed at means it should be a lot more sophisticated, so I changed the font a bit and tried to make it a lot more professional and age range appropriate.

Conclusion

In conclusion over the next few weeks we shall be creating Cathedral Buddy, the Interactive Augmented reality app. The app will work as a tour guide for customers of the Cathedral. The software we shall be using is a plugin for Unity called Vuforia. We hope for this project to be a successful product and will cater to our target audience.

References

https://blippar.com/en/builder

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/vuforia/features

http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/understanding-your-apps-target-audience--mobile-3968

Winchester Cathedral (N.D). Winchester Cathedral. Available:http://www.winchester-cathedral.org.uk/our-heritage/ [Accessed March 2015]

Hepburn (2014). Union Station: Augmented Reality History Tours. Available:http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/union-station-augmented-reality-living-history-tours-app/ [Accessed March 2015]

Westminster Abbey (N.D). Westminster Abbey. Available: http://www.westminster-abbey.org/[Accessed March 2015]

PewResearchCenter (N.D). Teens and Tecnology 2013. Available: http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/03/13/teens-and-technology-2013/

7

[Accessed March 2015]

8