Tme: Sep.5-11
Summary:
This week, we arranged a group meeting with Ralph, Mo, Jaehee and staff from La MaMa and discussed some key questions, including the purposes of the archive and AR app. The project path became clear for us to narrow down our research to a few types of archival collections, for example, posters, photos, show props like puppets, costumes, masks, and other accessories.
Client Meeting:
We had our first meeting with Mia, Billy, and Sophy from La MaMa and walked them through our progress in background research. Some questions were clarified as listed below.
- What is the primary value of the archive?
- For funders, artists, performers to experience the breadth of LA MAMA and to understand the context of the theatre.
- What is the key reason for creating the app?
- As a window to the archive and to preserve the tour from Ozzie Rodriguez.
- To provide more values, details and in-depth info beyond what people can see in the tour.
- The final product (not necessarily this project) could support both remote and in-person tour usage. This app could serve as a proof-of-concept prototype to help fundraise later.
- Target audience
- Primary audience now are students (high school, undergrad, grad), artists (national and international) and archivists.
- They hope to attract funders later on.
- Why do we need a virtual tour app when we have a real tour guide?
- Some use cases could include when visitors are in the space without the tour guide or when they return to an object after the tour.
- Even during the tour, Ozzie spends 2 hours but there are still too many details to cover in that timeframe.
- The app could be helpful when used by more experienced researchers, compared to less experienced visitors
- What are things people can’t observe only with their eyes in the archive?
- A rain machine (multi-sensory)
- Instruments (audio)
- Smell
- Puppets (movement)
Production:
Production design tasks have been put forward and you are already seeing our logo (created this week) everywhere on the website! Big thank you to Yutian (Ray) for speed creation and aesthetic design!
The following week (Week 3) is the time for ¼ walkaround with ETC faculty and staff where they provide feedback on our initial research and design. These faculty and staff, including our instructors, will comment on different aspects, project deliverables, technical difficulties, client relationship, etc.
Design:
To help us brainstorm ideas, we used this visual organization tool, a Composition Box, to gather our design team’s and stakeholders’ ideas, inspiration, expectations and needs, and start developing our player experience goals.
With the initial research on AR technology, we were choosing to deliver a downloadable AR mobile app or a web-based AR experience. The decision quickly came down to Web AR due to the reduced steps of publishing and downloading an app. Considering the lack of experience in web scripting in our team and limited free Web AR development kits, we were approved to use the paid service by 8th Wall to give ourselves a step up.
However, the progress is blocked without further communication with the archive staff. Without feeling the archive space and understanding the underlying social impacts of collection items, we don’t feel confident picking out items to start our development. After much negotiation, we will be traveling to NYC during Week 4 and experiencing the in-person tour with Ozzie. Hopefully, we will then be able to understand what we would like to preserve from the tour or expand the experience with AR interactions.
Art/UI:
Showing off our logo by Yutian (Ray) Xie:
Programming:
Having access to the project library of 8th Wall, we walked through most of their templates and tested Web AR capabilities that could be implemented in our project.
