We kicked off our brainstorming session at the beginning of Week 2 and it is time to narrow down our project scope! Our team listed up successful storytelling mobile applications and AR applications in the market and previous ETC projects related to our topic, and we were trying to get good inspirations from it. While doing research, we found that mobile AR technology can provide an immersive experience to explore the Hill District area remotely without any special devices.
Based on our research and ideas, we created a composition box in the playtest workshop. It was a great opportunity to figure out who is our main target, what are their needs, and our project directions. We got lots of constructive feedback from faculty and ETC students helping navigate our project direction.
We defined our project direction as aiming to create an experience that engages the guest with August Wilson’s work, as well as the city and the culture that helped inspire those works, through an interactive application that immerses the guest in the world of August Wilson. Our user will explore, discover, and learn the historical context of August Wilson’s plays throughout our application, so it should be an interesting supplementary resource for high school students who need to learn about August Wilson’s work and his life.
In the meantime, we started setting up our realistic and doable scope within a 14-week timeline. Our main target audience is high school students, and our secondary target is anyone else interested in August Wilson and the Hill District. In the client meeting, we heard that ‘August Wilson House’ has a future plan for creating a class curriculum about August Wilson for high school students in the Hill District area. Our team found that this would be a great opportunity to test our application in the real classroom setting, so we decided our main target as high school students.
We chose Android mobile phone as our main platform considering our programmer’s experience and for time sake. Main content would be historical context of Hill District in relation with his series work, The Pittsburgh Cycle. Unfortunately, August Wilson House is still under construction, so we might not be able to create a solid virtual tour or location-based experience around the house. So, our team chose a history of Hill District and his plays (The Pittsburgh Cycle) in terms of content and subject matter. As a stretch goal, we are planning to cover 3 different time periods, 1910s, 1930s, and 1960s.
While discussing about our platform, target, and user’s needs, we could list up major challenges that we need to figure out next week.
- Why AR?
- Interactive Storytelling using AR?
- Is it effective to deliver an emotional experience in AR?
We do not have any specific solutions and answers yet, but we hope to find out good solutions soon!