Project Requirements
1.The Holographic Portfolio
Design a proof of concept for a holographic portfolio that covers the end-to-end experience of an artist’s portfolio to be viewed on the HoloLens. This is not about creating an “artwork” for the HoloLens, but rather a way to interact with different works in mixed reality on the HoloLens. The approach should be based on the experience of a studio visit.
The holographic portfolio proof of concept must include experiences for four types of artwork, including:
(1)Painting or Photograph; (2)Sculpture; (3)Performance Art or Interactive Installation or Game; (4)Film/Video.
The portfolio must also include a way to access the following items:
(1)Artist Bio; (2)Contact; (3)Artist Statement; (4)Upcoming Exhibitions and Exhibition History
2.Project Client
For this challenge we worked directly with some members of the Microsoft HoloLens design team.
Joshua Walton is a Principal Interaction Designer at Microsoft Hololens and Nicholas Kamuda is the Creative Director of Microsoft HoloLens. Joshua Walton has spent his career blurring the lines between the physical and digital. Prior to his role as Design Architect for Microsoft HoloLens and Windows Holographic he co-founded the LAB at the Rockwell Group in 2008, an interactive architecture group. Joshua’s early work focused on design and computation, culminating in the entry installation for the 2008 Venice Biennale. This work was his transition to the creation of interactive spaces and platforms, including the Canne award winning west lobby installation at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Other interactive architecture projects and clients include JetBlue JFK T5 Terminal, Google, Starwood Hotels, the Imagination Playground, and Intel at Maker Faire.
3.The User
For the purposes of the demo, your user is a curator.
HoloLens Studio
Research, Brainstorming & Sketching
To understand the HoloLens better, our team went to the Microsoft Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City to take part in demos that showed o the capabilities of the HoloLens. These sessions were one hour in length and demonstrated to us three use cases for the HoloLens – as a mixed reality showroom, pinning holograms into a room for playful and fun interactions, and a mixed reality game.
The one hour demo session that we went to was key to helping our team understand the vision for Microsoft has for the HoloLens. It also introduced us to concepts that are important when developing a mixed reality experience. 3D sound, gestures, voice commands, and the limited eld of view all had to be accounted for when we started to think about just how this experience would take shape.
After understanding what the HoloLens could do, our team opted to dive right into thinking about what this could mean in terms of this design challenge. We sat down and brainstormed potential interactions that our team could integrate into the app that would meet the goals we set at the beginning of the project.
User Research
Comparative Analysis
In order to better understand the concept of exploring and seeing art pieces with virtual reality or augmented reality, we looked up some existing applications in the market to see how people design this kind of experience. We chose three gallery visit experience applications currently in the market for di erent platforms. We then compared those experiences to each other and our concept to see how they designed for a digital experience.
Video Prototypes
We decided to film a short video in order to showcase this first rough idea. Consistent with our “Prototyping tools” section, we used a variety of low tech, simple materials to create the physical holograms and the entirety of the video was a clear walkthrough of a typical user ow in this concept. We spent less than three hours prototyping and shooting in this phase and we tried to keep it simple so our user testers would be able to ease into the concept of mixed reality.
1.First Prototype
Our team’s first prototype took on a more traditional approach. Upon starting the app, the user would be tasked with placing a menu into the world and using it to drag and drop art pieces into the space around them.
Our second prototype focused more on recreating the experience of a studio visit and is very much intertwined with the inclusion of a digital assistant that we named ArtDroid-82, or Arty for short. In this version of the prototype, the user would be able to “visit” an artist studio that is pre-designed, presumably by the artist himself, rather than placing holograms into space.
2.Second Prototype
The user is transported into the studio which is already populated by holograms of the artists work and is also intro-duced to Arty and his abilities over mixed reality space. Arty conducts an optional tour of the studio where the user is taken from art piece to art piece and given basic information about the work as well as information on how to control and adjust the holograms in the studio.
User Flow
To make the whole experience more clear, we created a kind of visual flow specially for MR design.
Table of Elements
Iteration & User Testing
Unity Prototype
Final Thoughts & Insights
With the creation of the concept of Arty, the digital assistant for the holographic studio experience, we sought to bring a more human connection to the mixed reality experience. We took assumptions that humans wanted to connect with other humans and translated it into the creation of a digital assistant.
In a way, we had come full circle in terms of how information was disseminated to people. Before the invention of the Gutenberg press, information was largely disseminated by people through word of mouth. When humans could print books in large volumes, books became vessels of information. With the rise of the internet and smartphones, information once again reached a broader audience. Now, in mixed reality, we are utilizing a digital assistant to disseminate information to the user. This type of digital assistant may play a important role in the future MR experience.