top of page
1/2
inworks
InWorks is an application for students and professionals to share their work and engage in live critique with integrated augmented reality to capture and share 3D work. It adapts to the virtual classes, runs on existing devices (mobile, tablet, or desktop), and creates an immersive critique experience.
DURATION
10 weeks, Apr 2020 - Jun 2020
TEAM
Joanne Chen, Jasper Xie, Yuna Shin, Julia Kolde, Olivia Quesada
CONTRIBUTION
Research, Ideation, User Flow, Visuals
FINAL PRODUCT
1/2
CLASS DASHBOARD
The Class Dashboard shows the current studio classes the student is taking. For each class, there is a built in space for each student to upload and present their work.
Dot Indicator
The dot indicator places next to the individual name shows the active and inactive status of students, which can encourage spontaneous critiques and collaborations.
Enter Live Critique
Enter Live Critique Button allows for easy, direct access to classes.
LIVE CLASS CRITIQUE
Comments
Students can use the drawing pen, comment section, highlighter, object part selector, and AR snapshot tool to add comments to the student projects presented.
Timeline
Archived critiques can be viewed at the bottom timeline chronologically for reference later in the future.
VR/AR Workspace
AR viewport allows users to see the object in real life situation with a sense of scale. Screen captures can be annotated for later review
FILE UPLOAD
To upload work from the student's device, simply click on the plus button on the top right of the profile. The security setting allows one or more person to view the work.
PROFILE
The Profile shows all the work the student uploaded for different classes, which allows for easy access and edit.
Link Sharing
Share work directly with others outside of designated class to critique for critique and feedback
design challenge
How might we provide a more immersive communication tool for art and design students in order to have an effective learning experience?
DESIGN CHALLENGE
contextual inquiry
To better understand and gain empathy for our target group, we proceeded in conducting research on college students taking studio-based classes through survey and semi-structured interviews. Through these design methods, we were able to gain insight into the problems students faced after transitioning to remote learning.
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
BACKGROUND
Due to COVID-19, most schools have switched to remote learning, and thus impacting students who need physical facilities and spontaneous interactions the most. Looking at existing majors and how classes are taught at colleges, we determine that students working with 3D materials have the least supported platform and resources to build their projects.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Lack of Communication
Students missed the ease of communication and spontaneous “working together” time and sharing in person.
Tools for Collaboration
Students lose a sense of scale and detail when seeing other’s work in online critiques.
Physical Tools and Materials
Tools available such as Zoom and Google Meet do not provide an effective space for critique and feedback.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
95% of teens own a smart device, allowing augmented reality in education to be more accessible.
35% increase in student engagement and retention when learning with immersive and 3D technologies.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Accommodating
Accessible across living situations.
Fluent
Easily integrated with other virtual communication tools.
Immersive
Engages students in class projects and critiques.
define
After empathizing with the users, we created personas to makes sure we are creating the product with the specific users in mind while considering the others that might be excluded.
DEFINE
ideation
With our personas, we began to ideate. In the beginning, we wanted to design a mixed reality platform that would let users interact with projects freely, but after discussing the potential harms, we switched to a more accessible solution.
IDEATION
INITIAL IDEA & POTENTIAL HARMS
Based on our research and findings, we decided to work on a solution that is based on Mixed-Reality as it provides a responsive 3D interactive experience. We briefly ideated how the device is going to work with our device and the potential harms it might have.
Affordability
Financial cost of either the teaching facility and/or students may make it difficult to acquire.
Accessibility
Like other online tools, limited or lack internet ac cess can inhibit use of the program and device.
The device is also somewhat heavy making hard to wear for some users whether it’s a physical restriction of putting it on.
Security
Keeping users and their data secure and private
ITERATION
After discussing, we decided the original concept is not practical for any SES. We then shifted our concept to an application that can be installed on several devices, preferably a tablet. This also meant that we shifted from mixed reality to augmented and virtual reality to accommodate multiple devices.
We considered the weight, battery life, and affordability of the Hololens itself.
We realized the accessibility concerns of going this futuristic at a time with COVID-19. Instead, the project pivoted to exploring ways we could make this tool as a practical solution for students with their existing devices.
user flow & prototype
Below are the user flow and prototype in Figma of InWorks, the app we designed for studio classes. There were different ideas of the features that should be included, the most important being a studio that are held in class and in a shared envirnoment.
USER FLOW & PROTOTYPE
style guide
Below are the fonts we use, the size, the branding, and primary colors.
STYLE GUIDE
acknowledgement
Many thanks to 24 participants who helped us in our design research. They are from :
ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA), Edmonds College (Lynnwood, WA), Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago, IL), Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY), Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI), University of Washington (Seattle, WA)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT