We sent out a preliminary survey to gain insight at a larger scale into how often our target users feel lonely and what types of situations perpetuate this feeling. Concomitantly, the survey questioned users about how they measure the authenticity of their current relationships, and how inclined they are to joining new communities.

Outcome: This process gave us insight on the preferred terminology used by our audience, and helped us avoid confuse wording of questions during intercepts and interviews.

We conducted sixty intercepts with art and design students to understand their current mental model of art as a medium for self-expression and how their intimate social circles developed. Many participants were still perplexed by the breadth of art-related events and semantics concerning intimacy, until we provided examples.

Outcome: We used these findings to scope our interview questions moving forward.

We held sixteen interviews with SCAD students to obtain in-depth qualitative responses regarding the key aspects of the prompt. Many participants echoed the notion of measuring the authenticity of a relationship by the amount of effort put forth into the relationship while others expressed how they feared reaching out first due to the risk of rejection.

Conducting expert interviews gave us technical understanding of the two humane facets of the project. A psychoanalyst, a psychologist and a neurologist helped us understand the science behind loneliness, what leads to it and how to deal with it, while SCAD staff from Residence and Housing and from the Counseling and Student Support Services (CS3) gave us insights on how to connect students and create authentic relationships and communities.

We put out cultural probes posing the question of what it means to be a part of a community and the feelings associated with community in relation to how often the participants prefer to be alone. Those who favored the presence of others related community to a positive entity larger than themselves, while those who preferred to be alone the majority of the time associated community with social anxiety and onus.

As an alternative research method, we brought a long sheet of brown paper and art supplies to a local park and asked people to draw the reason they were at Forsyth Park that day. Not only we learned compelling motives that make people get out of their houses, but also gained valuable insight on how people behave while collaborating in art and the importance of partaking in an activity with others, as they eased them into it.

Outcome The interactions we observed paved the way to one of our core concepts, the Easter Eggs!

Launching a snapchat probe was our informal way to find out how people interacted with augmented reality, even if they weren’t fully aware or understood the subject. By asking about their favorite filters and the way they interact with the app, we gathered a strong tendency towards humor, such as using the bitmojis to express whom they wish they were, or face filters for laughs or take advantage of their exaggerated proportions to hide flaws and enhance attributes they were proud of.

Before moving into ideation phase, we conducted a research on the competitive landscape to understand ways companies were helping with loneliness mitigation, what AR apps were successful and why, and what engaging art tools were out there. We soon realized many pre-existing artistic AR programs focus on individual experiences over collaborative ones, while art related ones did not allow for complete expression, restricting users to a limited set of tools. The more successful programs offered new experiences to entice continuous use.

By creating our three archetypes, we could create scenarios based on our research and pinpoint moments in their daily lives in which our app could enhance their experiences and ease their pains. We then analyzed their needs, behaviors, motivations, likes and dislikes to inform our design principles.

Based on our interviews and the archetypes we developed, we created a list of likes and dislikes for each of our three user types. Those, along their needs, were categorized between “Not our Priority”, “Table Stakes” and “Priorities” and proceeded to affinetize them according to similar patterns. From those affinitized categories, we created our design principles and, for each principle, two “how might we” statements to help push our concepts forward.

Our design principles were the culmination of our research. The needs and likes/dislikes of our archetypes (that were created based on our interviews), were complemented and checked against the information of our experts and directed towards areas our competitors were lacking in. These served as our guiding compass when creating our initial wave of concepts.

Individually and in groups, we developed several concepts that tackled directly each of the design principles as stand-alone features that could be combined with one another or dropped entirely. These concepts also focused on dealing with the three middle stages of the model for mitigating loneliness (Reduce Anxiety, Open Up, Authentic Relationships), since we realized that building authentic communities is a consequence of the authentic relationships built within it and that people who struggle with the first stage of the model need professional psychological help, and would limit the scope, effectiveness and potential of the app if part of our target audience.

Upon feedback from our midterm and from talking with prospective users, we decided to focus on two concepts: the Easter Eggs (AR artwork hidden around the physical world for others to find) and Geogram (using AR art to leave notes and communicate with others).
Multidisciplinary teams then developed several ideas and pitches that expanded upon these concepts and did cognitive run through with users.

With the user feedback of our ideas in mind, each team proceeded to create Invision wireframes that focused particularly in one of the three key areas of the prompt: AR+Art, Building Communities or Mitigating Loneliness. We gathered more feedback with user testing, found overlapping elements between our ideas and started merging them closer together and refining with each iteration.

With the user feedback of our ideas in mind, each team proceeded to create Invision wireframes that focused particularly in one of the three key areas of the prompt: AR+Art, Building Communities or Mitigating Loneliness. We gathered more feedback with user testing, found overlapping elements between our ideas and started merging them closer together and refining with each iteration.

With a building blocks approach being the core of our creation tool, we needed a variety of 3D models that could be combined in different and interesting ways. Keeping a low poly count and limiting the color choices helped us guarantee that whatever the user created would be aesthetically pleasing, while the light wood grain helped add dimensionality and texture to those models.

We constructed a series of principles regarding developing for AR based on our testing and research, since there aren't really any standards. The biggest challenge was figuring out what should be augmented UI elements in physical space and what should be part of the 2d interface. Google’s colors and material design, but with a lighthearted and playful twist, defined our UI style. When it came to branding the app, we wanted to choose a name that encompassed the freedom associated with creating in AR. Not only is this app an escape from the user’s reality, it is truly a limitless landscape for self-expression, thus Scapes was born.

On the second half of the quarter, we conducted user testing every thursday and sunday to better inform our development decisions. Earlier concepts and wireframes were presented to people on the streets through cognitive walk-throughs. As prototypes started becoming more high-fidelity, testing happened under controlled environments and gave us ample feedback on more granular interactions, such as the best way to move objects around or wether the tools should be displayed in a 2D UI or in augmented reality form - with participants highly preferring the latter.

A great idea can be severely undermined if poorly presented, therefore as soon as the wireframes for Scapes were consolidated and we knew the interactions the user could perform, we started working on its vision video to ensure a high-quality, easily understandable explanation of our concept. Scripts were written, followed by iterations of storyboards and eventually a 12+ hours video shoot with eight actors and a full production crew. Green Screens were used on the phones, since most of the visuals of Scapes weren’t finished by the shooting date, and were then replaced with recording of phone screens at a later date.