| Introduction Day at the Museum is a mobile VR application in which users can navigate between five exhibits demonstrating the impacts of VR on the architecture industry. (the official project title was Night at the Museum, but a daytime scene fit better for this project) |
Breakdown of the Final Piece The user begins inside a photosphere of a backyard by a tree. There is a black orb nearby that, if clicked, provides information about the scene. This orb also provides users the option to switch from the photosphere scene to a new scene, of the same backyard, created in Tilt Brush. In both scenes, the user can teleport to different locations by clicking on blue orbs. Teleporting allows the user to experience the scene from different perspectives and also brings them to different black orbs, each of which can be clicked on to display an exhibit. Each exhibit includes three panels that can be cycled between by clicking on “Next” and “Back” buttons. The first panel in each exhibit describes a feature that VR provides. These features are: Scale, Presence, Perspective, Collaboration, and Rapid Ideation. The second panel in each exhibit explains how the feature is relevant to architecture. The third panel displays a video, taken from YouTube, which illustrates how the VR feature is being used in architecture. |
Story of the Process Prior to starting this project I attended a local Meetup event in Portland, Oregon that included guest speakers making presentations on the impact of VR in architecture. After the event, I wrote down an outline of the main points, which served as the basis for the content of my exhibits. One concept that stuck out for me at the event was how designers could use actual images of a space in VR. To capture this idea in my application, I decided to build my design off of photospheres. I used the backyard of my house to avoid any legal or privacy issues. One technical challenge I faced early on was how to create the illusion of a teleportation system within a set of photospheres. This turned out to be easier than expected. By placing a set of teleportation orbs equidistant around the player and then adjusting their individual scales, I could create the impression that the orbs were different distances away. I strengthened this illusory sense of distance by placing an information orb at each location so that the user a point of reference at each location—since the info. orbs look like they “should be” the same size as the teleportation orbs, the user is encouraged to assume the teleportation orbs are further away rather than simply being smaller. |
After creating the photospheres and a method for “moving” between them, I started building exhibits for each location. This involved writing out the textual content of the exhibit and using Unity’s built-in video player component, introduced in Version 5.6, and finding videos that suited the theme of each exhibit. I could have stopped here and continued using photospheres as the basis for each exhibit, but I wanted to take this project a bit further and showcase VR’s usefulness in architecture from the angles of collaborative design and rapid ideation by immersing the user in a scene created in VR. I used Tilt Brush for this purpose and recreated the backyard as a sketch. Using this new scene involved creating an additional teleportation mechanic where the user actually teleported to different locations in the scene. After some final adjustments and proofreading, Day at the Museum was ready for final user testing. |
User Testing and Iteration
The biggest challenge that surfaced in user testing was making it clear to the user, particularly those new to VR, what they were actually supposed/able to do in the application. The expanding reticle and “?” mark on each of the informational orbs proved helpful in encouraging the user to click on the black orb near the tree in the starting scene. In addition, I set the starting angle of the camera so that the black orb was in the user’s field of view at the start of the game so they did not have to hunt for it. I made use of the orb at the starting location as a place to describe the mechanics of the application, explaining to the user how they could navigate the scene, view exhibits, and move between the photosphere and Tilt Brush scenes. Since the starting point provided information about the application itself, I decided against using it as an exhibit location in either scene.
Conclusion
Day at the Museum follows the old adage “show, don’t tell” in its display of the value of VR in architecture. It is one thing to hear a lecture or watch a 2-dimensional video on the increased immersion one experiences when viewing a building in VR, and quite another to have such an experience firsthand. In Day at the Museum, the user reads about the improved sense of scale in VR while looking at a house in its proper scale, reads about perspective when looking at that same house from a different perspective, and learns about how VR allows designers to achieve more effective rapid ideation while standing inside of scene I drew quickly and easily in Tilt Brush. Users don’t have to imagine what I try to explain in the text of the exhibits, nor do they have to take my word for it that what I say about VR is true—they can see it all for themselves.
The biggest challenge that surfaced in user testing was making it clear to the user, particularly those new to VR, what they were actually supposed/able to do in the application. The expanding reticle and “?” mark on each of the informational orbs proved helpful in encouraging the user to click on the black orb near the tree in the starting scene. In addition, I set the starting angle of the camera so that the black orb was in the user’s field of view at the start of the game so they did not have to hunt for it. I made use of the orb at the starting location as a place to describe the mechanics of the application, explaining to the user how they could navigate the scene, view exhibits, and move between the photosphere and Tilt Brush scenes. Since the starting point provided information about the application itself, I decided against using it as an exhibit location in either scene.
Conclusion
Day at the Museum follows the old adage “show, don’t tell” in its display of the value of VR in architecture. It is one thing to hear a lecture or watch a 2-dimensional video on the increased immersion one experiences when viewing a building in VR, and quite another to have such an experience firsthand. In Day at the Museum, the user reads about the improved sense of scale in VR while looking at a house in its proper scale, reads about perspective when looking at that same house from a different perspective, and learns about how VR allows designers to achieve more effective rapid ideation while standing inside of scene I drew quickly and easily in Tilt Brush. Users don’t have to imagine what I try to explain in the text of the exhibits, nor do they have to take my word for it that what I say about VR is true—they can see it all for themselves.