Summary
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Project: Virtual Reality experience of the history of a street
Target User: Tourists and locals interested in history
Goal: Create a compelling VR experience that can immerse the user in the history of a place
Role: UX and Interaction design
Target User: Tourists and locals interested in history
Goal: Create a compelling VR experience that can immerse the user in the history of a place
Role: UX and Interaction design
Our research showed that while AR applications sounded attractive for such an experience, people would rarely use their phone on the spot - due to lack of motivation and fear of embarrassment. A head-mounted display VR experience was an obvious alternative, with a caveat that it mostly fits in a museum setting. Our focus was to create an immersive experience, which would be memroable enough for users to both learn something new and spark their interest in the subject.
Introduction
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What is a biography? It's the story of a person. How they became what they are today. The story of their successes and failures. What if we could tell the biography of a street - in VR?
This project aimed to do just that, through the use of Virtual Reality and historical content, we hoped to show the biography of a street, and in the meantime, demonstrate the effects of both good and bad urban planning in our current every day lives.
Using this VR prototype, you can go back in different time periods on Linnegatan, a street in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, and experience the music and sounds of the past. You are also given the opportunity to manipulate history, in order to see what the effects might be in the future.
Idea generation
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Before work on the prototypes began, we set out to investigate who would be interested in a historical VR experience. We conducted an initial pilot survey, but it turned out to be too broad and results were inconclusive. We realized that users would better grasp the idea we were asking them about if we created a tangible and concrete prototype for them to test and then find out what their thoughts on the whole process were. We created an MVP and tested it with potential users, which was great to start our creative process, utilizing mind-mapping.
User story
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Our initial research showed that the most suitable place to house such a project was a museum setting. We created a simple user story in order for us to easily explain what we wanted to accomplish.
User testing and Analysis
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The main issues that came up when testing different iterations of the prototypes that we came up with were issues of user engagement and navigation. People felt like they had no direction or goal. We wanted to keep our educational theme, and we felt like gamifying our concept will detract from that. Instead, we opted to play around with history - we gave users the choice to change history and see the effects in the future! Our testing setup allowed us to see what the users were seeing too.
This is how we thought the alternate history concept could be used by our users.
Prototype progression
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This is how our prototype evolved. From simply being able to look around, to being able to interact with interesting rich media. On top left: MVP with a web-based tour. Then we have our second iteration within VR on top right. Then our third iteration with the introduction of "alternate history", bottom left. Finally, our latest prototype with new interactions and more information.
Final video presentation of our prototype
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After 4 iterations of ideation, prototyping and user testing, this is our final prototype, which is fully functional in a head-mounted display, presented via a short video:
Thank you for checking this project out!
