ARchive
AR experience to preserve the stories of the Seattle Central District.
Timeline
2 Days
Winter 2024
Tools
Figma
Bezi
Blockade Labs
Roles
XR Prototyper
Interface Designer
Team
SHOWCASE
VIDEO
RESEARCH
Extended reality is an exciting emergent technology, with most applications revolving around entertainment and marketing. Revere’s mission is to leverage this technology to preserve often unappreciated history, especially focusing on the Black community in the Seattle Central District. This hackathon provided a non-traditional hackathon experience, with the inclusion of significant elders and a social justice lens.
We spoke to 75 year-old Phyllis Yasutake, a lifelong resident of the Central District, for over an hour. She spoke about her family, her childhood, and of the importance of respect, credit, education, safety, and community.
“Central District made me appreciate my family, parents, and community a lot more.”
Stories and Takeaways
From the stories shared, we decided to leverage extended reality to add environments to Phyllis’s stories. We focused on three geographic locations Phyllis had vivid memories of, which have all changed significantly over time. These quotes served as the basis for our secondary research.
Locations
Seattle Fire Station 8
23rd and Yesler Way
“Claude Harris, he was the first Black fireman and worked his way all the way up to Chief. And as he moved up, he brought in a lot of firefighters today and they're there because of Chief Harris.”
Mardi Gras Tavern
21st Avenue & E Madison
“We had we had the Mardi Gras Club, which was on Madison...where the Safeway is now on Madison and 23rd...It was very famous. It's where Ray Charles played. He played there. So we had a lot of nightclubs.”
YMCA
23rd Avenue & E Olive Street
“Meredith Matthews YMCA. They don't do community things like they used to. But Meredith Matthews built that building as if he had been in the my dad's group of men.”
Problem Statement
How might we leverage extended reality to transport people into worlds built by stories?
IDEATION
With the information we learned, we mapped out what our experience should feel like. We imagined our target audience to be younger, and with the prevalence of smartphones, we chose an augmented reality environment over a fully virtual one.
Additionally, we took into account the cost of VR devices, and accessibility concerns surrounding headsets. We also wanted elders to be able to add to their spaces anywhere, further cementing our direction for augmented reality.
Goals
- Community
Inclusivity
Inspired
Empowered
Themes
What do we want them to learn?
History of a space
Names of the trailblazers
Shared history with a location
Why
What is the point?
In order to preserve history that can go forgotten
To pay respects to the people that made things the way they are
Objectives
What do we want them to do?
Share experiences
Build a community in order to empower each other
Remain curious
Initial Ideas + Features
We first thought of a AR geocaching experience, however reflected on accessibility. Furthermore, we spent a lot of time deliberated what made augmented reality different from a 2D interface experience. After discussing for over two hours, we came to a consensus that immersion, and the ability to experience different environments was the most compelling use for AR.
- LIDAR scans of the places
Audio integration
- User comments
- Multiple elder contributions
- Shared spaces
Content
Research was synthesized into informative cards.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Prototyping was done on Bezi, with imported screens of content from Figma. Blockade Labs was used to create immersive skyboxes for the experience.
The interface inside of the spaces represents three different eras in time, early to mid 20th century, mid to late 20th century, and present day. This offers perspective to how these spaces have changed over time.
Reflection
This was my first real end-to-end design project with the entire process. There were a lot of things I learned, including:
Hackathon Takeaways
This was my first real hackathon, and it was an amazing experience hearing about the elders and their stories, as well as leveraging emerging technology for altruistic purposes. I made new friends, and we created a working prototype than anyone can try anywhere.
XR Prototyping
I learned how to fully use Bezi! I loved how easy it was to create fully interactive prototypes. Additionally, I worked mostly with tech, while my team members did most of the research, which meant I could fully focus on my tasks. However, Bezi was still in Beta when this happened, which meant that a lot of the integrations we thought of were unable to be implemented.
If we had more time...
LIDAR scans or gaussian splats of the locations instead of the skyboxes
Audio integration using the recording we had
User input for community building
Physical objects or pictures the elders had
Detailed storyboards
Usability testing and iterations
Overall, huge thank you to my hackathon team and the Revere XR team for the event!
