Thesis Project I Documentation
September - December 2019
Week 1, Sept 6
Thesis Project Overview Presentation
This week I presented my initial thesis ideas and expected outcome. I received feedback from the faculty and decided to move forward with my second idea: AR and Spatial Memory.
Week 2, Sept 13
Writing Workshop, Research
Through iterative and rapid writing workshop in class, I was trying to make my idea more concrete and find the focal of my thesis. I received feedback that I need to do a lot of background research to ground my thesis and also figure the social impact of it, therefore this week was mainly focusing on readings.
Week 3, Sept 20 -
Greenlight Presentation
This week I did my greenlight presentation and pivot my research question to “how might AR improve people’s spatial thinking skill“, I was trying to frame it in STEM discipline education and bias elimination in pre-employment screening process, but from the feedback I received, I need to think about another research methodology because ethnography doesn’t apply, and the importance of STEM education is also controversial. I also need to start thinking about the project design.
I met with my friend Emma who gave me some really thoughtful feedback on how to survive from thesis and some books/podcasts related to my project. I also reached out to Professor Manu in ID and got some really good inspirations from our conversation in terms of the meaning of memory for each individual, which seems to be a direction that is way more resonate with me and my original thoughts on the project.
Week 4, Sept 27 -
Prototyping, Technical Investigation
This week I focused on prototyping and technical investigation on softwares and tools for Location-based AR development. I also made some mockup and mood board to formulate the general aesthetics direction I am heading towards.
After explore 5 software/plugins, I find that MetaverseAR platform offers the best solution for fast location-based (marker-less) AR prototyping as it uses visual programming interface and no coding is required. Hence I decided this will be the major tool I would like to use in this semester. After that, I will look into placenotedevs and AR Foundation, both of them could achieve solid result but requires more time in software development. AR +GPS Unity plugin is my backup plan, it provides everything I need in terms of coding but is quite pricy.
Metavserse AR platform testing process
Finally I decided to use Metaverse platform for rapid AR prorotyping, as it doesn’t require coding and I can instantly test my work by scanning the QR code. It allows me to create location-based AR content at ease.
