Hello everyone !

In today’s lesson I learned more about the design process : about sketching, prototyping and user evaluation.

Ideate

I thought of 3 ideas of augmented reality applications to enhance human abilities.

Telepathy

Didn’t you ever want to know what the others think ? Well with this AR application you could !

Indeed, this first application enables telepathy. The user has the possibility to choose to hear the thoughts of everyone in a 3 meters perimeter, to hear only the positive thoughts, or to only hear the thoughts of one person. Here are some sketches of what would see the user with the application.

On the top right you can see a little icon, the user can select it to see the 3 different options he as. Once the user chose one option, the little icon on the top right will correspond to the option selected.

Here is the firsts sketches in the point of you of the user. He is in a family dinner with his parents in law. He chooses to only hear the positive thoughts.

Below you can see an example of the option " 1 person thoughts “. Here he discovers if his friends really liked his gift.

The last option is to see everyone’s thoughts in a 3 meters perimeter. I here you say, “Why would we want to know all their thoughts ?”. Well, because you are bored in the subway !

Super Jumps

The second idea is to enhance human jumping, with an application that gives the sensation of jumping higher. First, the user can choose how hight he wants to jump, then he can see the creation of a virtual hole in front of him, where he will jump into. Even if he lands faster than what he sees in the headset, the image will give him the sensation that he is still falling.

Below you can see a sketch that shows the user’s menu, where he can choose to jump to 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 meters. Jumping 2 meters is possible for humans, but quite difficult. I believe that the human record is 2,78 meters, so 4 meters is really impressive.

As we can see, instead of tracking his hands, the setup tracks the user’s feats. It gives more realism to the jump.

Piano Virtuoso

The third idea is a AR application that helps the user becoming a pianist. As you can see on the sketch below, the player wears an AR headset that highlights in colour the key that should be played next, on the music sheet and on the keyboard.

The colour highlighting the key depends on the note’s length. The shortest beat a note is, the more vivid the colour will be. For example, on the sketch I chose to highlight in blue a minim note (2 beats), and in red a demisemiquaver (1/8 beat). The semibreves could be highlighted in green, the crotchets in purple, the quaver in yellow, and the semiquaver in orange.

This way, the AR application would not only show which piano key to play, but how long it should be played.

Prototype

I decided to make a prototype of the piano application, because it seemed to be the most feasible.

I think that a paper prototype is really suited for this application. My idea was to represent piano keys on the paper, by cutting holes on a first sheet and putting it on top of a second sheet. To let another piece of paper in colour pass through the two sheets, they should only be glued on their extremities.

In order to make my prototype a minimum realistic, I started by measuring the size of the piano keys, before drawing them on the first paper sheet. I let a little space between each key to make them recognizable once cut.

Then, I cut the paper following the guidelines I draw :

Next, I glued the first sheet of paper on the second one, but I let space on top of the keys. Because it is easier to control the colour sheet from the side the most further away from the key, without troubling the player. I added the black keys for realism, but without making them playable since some songs can be played only with the white keys.

Finally, I cut two long paper sheets of the width of one key notes, in order to simulate the highlighting of the application. My prototype was now ready to be used !

User Evaluation

A non piano player tested my prototype. I chose a simple music : “Une poule sur un mur”, and downloaded its partition. To simulate the sound of a piano, I used the online keyboard available on imusic-school.com, therefore when the user taped on the paper key, she could hear the sound of the note.

First, we made the test with only one colour sheet, but i had to look at the partition, move the sheet and play the note on the online keyboard at the same time. I was too slow for the user.

So, I decided to only put the colour sheet on top of the notes as shown below. With this technique I tried to use both colour sheets, but I was still too slow for the user.

The user had some useful feedbacks. She likes the idea of being able to learn to play piano without notions of music theory. It is satisfying that the application reads the notes for her, and even if she decides to take music theory lessons, the application could still help her to learn the notes on a music sheet by showing them on the piano.

For the rhythm, using the two sheets of colour did not seem really clear for her. So, I suggested two other ideas. The colour could change when she taps on the key, and stays until she has to stop tapping it. Also, without changing colours, there could be a gauge showing how much time she must wait before playing the other note. This gauge would start after she let go of the previous note.

Therefore, even if my prototype has some flaws ( the speed to show a note ), the user experience still showed me what really mattered : being able to play without having further knowledge of music theory, and how to improve my application : illustrate better the music rhythm.